


Ad Aeternum

by supaslim



Series: The Way of All Flesh [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Ableism, Addiction, Amputation, Angst, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Brotherhood of Steel (Fallout), Canon Gay Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Chronic Pain, Dark, Dark Comedy, Dissociation, Drama, Drug Addiction, Drug Dealing, Drug Use, Ethics, Flashbacks, Followers of the Apocalypse (Fallout), Gen, Goodsprings, Hallucinations, Independent New Vegas (Fallout), Medical Trauma, NCR | New California Republic, Night Stalkers, Panic Attacks, Personal Growth, Physical Disability, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Secret Identity, So much trauma, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, Unrepentant Grossness, Vulpes Inculta gets what he deserves, Vulpes Inculta is Not Okay, Vulpes is a petulant child, Vulpes is having a Bad Time, Whump, all aboard the pain train, aroace character, burning bridges since 2283, canon typical homophobia, canon typical sexism, evil karma, less angsty than it sounds I promise, long fic, nothing too heinous just vague Legion flavored disdain, pirate radio, this is not a warm and fluffy fic, unhelpful self help
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2019-10-19 02:32:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 110,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17592953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supaslim/pseuds/supaslim
Summary: Recovering from the Courier is a twelve step process, and every step is "don't die." Vulpes struggles to get past step one.This is a direct sequel to"That We Become"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! First things first: this is a direct sequel to [That We Become](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13035702), which is in turn a sequel to [Wight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130511). If you read this first, you will be very confused. I'm very proud of both of those fics and I would be grateful if you gave them a read! If not, you can read the summaries of both fics [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17592920).
> 
> Second: I honestly meant to start posting this fic 2 months ago. Why the delay? I prefer to only post complete fics, and this one turned out a lot longer than intended. A LOT longer. I'm in the home stretch now, so I thought I would start posting it, but I have to admit- it's a little nerve-wracking not having the complete fic ready to go! I beg your patience regarding typos and clumsy writing while I finish the fic.
> 
> I'm very glad to have you here with me, and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I do writing it!

part 1: the knife at your back

 

The world was a fuzzy golden brown, and something was wrong.

His arm was as heavy as lead; he tried to lift a hand to his face, but it would only drift across the rough sheets, shaking and weak. He blinked; the shining motes that filled his vision remained. Something was pulling uncomfortably along his inner arm. Intravenous line, he realized, and some blind scrabbling with his other hand pulled it free.

He tried to roll onto his side, anxious to move, to find somewhere safe, but something was _wrong_. A thick lump of nausea rose in his throat and he closed his eyes, breathing, trying to calm down and think. Pain shot through his ribs with every frantic breath.

"You're awake," a man's voice sounded suddenly, and Vulpes flinched, eyes snapping open and wheeling frantically toward the source. A hand pressed gently to his shoulder and urged him to lie still, and while it did nothing to calm him, he was too weak to fight it. Scratchy fabric swiped at the IV insertion point, wicking away blood. "You've been in and out for the past few days." The voice was like old leather, warm and creased and sun-worn.

"...Wrong," Vulpes croaked, trying to twist away from the man, panic rising through the fog.

"Now, try to settle down," the man soothed, "You've been through quite an ordeal."

"This is-" Vulpes swallowed futilely, his mouth and throat incredibly dry, "This is _wrong,_ something is wrong- where is Lucius? Where..." He struggled against the hand holding him still and made no headway. His heart was hammering in his throat, and he could hear and feel the rush of blood in his ears over the high, deaf whine of tinnitus.

He could see the man, his vision sharpening as he blinked and blinked. An old man, bald and weathered with a bushy white mustache. He was glancing back over his shoulder, and shaking his head, and looking back down at Vulpes.

"Son," the old man said, and Vulpes bristled at the condescension, but froze because of the tone- bad news, it said. "I'm a doctor. Some men brought you here a few days ago. Do you remember?"

No, no, nonononono. There was the Courier and the _creatures_ , then the flashing light, and Lucius- Lucius... And...

"You were hurt real bad," the doctor continued. Vulpes tried desperately to sit up, to look down at his legs, but the hand on his shoulder slid to his sternum, pinning him firmly to the cot. "You were in septic shock, and had a nasty case of radiation sickness."

" _No_ ," Vulpes said emphatically, his voice cracking, and he managed to bring his hands to the doctor's wrist, too feeble to remove it but too terrified not to try. After a moment's deliberation, the doctor sighed and let Vulpes go, even going to far as to slide a supporting hand under his shoulders so he could see.

"I had to take your leg."

Vulpes stared. His left leg, stretched bare and bruised. His right thigh, normal; thick gauze over the knee; and then, just below the joint, _nothing_. One shaking hand extended towards it as his face twisted with anguish.

"Breathe," the doctor prompted, and Vulpes sucked in a sharp breath. His hand fell to the sheets.

"...Kill me," Vulpes demanded quietly.

"You're not dying, son," the doctor replied, face a hybrid of confusion and concern. "You're slated to make a full recovery, and you're downright lucky at that."

" _Kill me._ "

The confusion melted away.

"I ain't killing you. Your life's not over just 'cause you lost a leg."

"Give me- give me a knife."

The doctor looked over his shoulder again for a brief moment. Then he reached for something beyond Vulpes' field of vision. A moment later, there was a sharp prick on the inside of his arm, and the room faded out. His head fell back against the pillow. The world was a fuzzy golden brown.

* * *

He didn't know how long it was before he came back to his senses. He didn't know _when_ that happened, either. One minute there was nothing, and then a rusted gear in his head gave a wheezy groan and turned a single tooth.

He was staring at the space where his leg should have been.

Once he realized he was conscious, he had worked up the energy to sit upright, leaning sideways into the wall his cot was pushed against. He didn't feel anything, staring at his stump. Imagining the twisted, abbreviated flesh hiding under that too-white bandage. Something so ugly, he found himself thinking, had no business looking so clean. His hand fidgeted at his thigh, thumb working under the gauze, absentmindedly picking and pulling at frayed edges as he stared and considered.

 _I am a cripple_.

A thick wave of disgust washed down his spine, turning his stomach and finally forcing his gaze elsewhere.

Elsewhere, it turned out, was a small cart only a few feet away, sitting between the cot and a desk. On that cart were various syringes and tubes... and a scalpel. It would be messy, he thought numbly as he shoved against the wall, pushing his cot across the floor, but then, he had always known that his death would be. Legionaries didn't die quietly in bed.

Well. Not of natural causes. He didn't think suicide counted.

When he'd pushed the cot as close as he could, he carefully maneuvered himself further down the thin mattress, mindful of the suspicious length of plastic tubing that ran from under the thin cloth gown he was wearing to a bag of yellow-brown fluid that hung off the cot. He swung his legs- _leg and stump_ \- over the edge, leaning forward to reach for the cart. It was close, but the lingering fog of chems made it seem miles away. A finger clumsily snagged the edge, and then two, and then he was rolling it closer. His stump throbbed now that the blood was rushing to it.

The scalpel was in hand. He turned the steel over and over in his fingers, acquainting himself. The metal felt sticky and warm in the desert heat, but the blade was sharp, and he barely felt it as his flesh unzipped at its touch, the red blood streaming freely from the long cut he made in his arm.

No future, for cripples.

As the knife dropped from his hand he fell back flat on the cot, warm lifeblood pouring out and soaking in around him. The iron scent that hung in the air was almost comforting in its familiarity. He was distantly aware of a door closing, of heavy footsteps on old wooden boards, and then cursing and the crash of drawers and upturned equipment.

Some shred of him seemed to understand what was happening when foreign hands grasped his arm, an arm that barely felt like it belonged to him now, because all he felt as he passed out was disappointment.

* * *

When he woke up again, he was strapped to the cot. That didn't surprise or disappoint him as much as the fact that he did, indeed, wake up. He tested the restraints, but they felt solid.

"You gave me a fright," the doctor grumbled, and Vulpes cracked open his eyes. The old man was sitting at the cot's side, slumped back in his chair with clear exhaustion.

Vulpes stayed silent. He turned his head to face the wall. He wasn't ashamed of his attempt- he was annoyed at being thwarted.

"Now, I don't know much about you, but I know you're a fighter. A soldier of some sort. I saw your scars, and them boys who brought you in. And there’s the Dam. So I can understand that you might feel like there's nothing left for you, if you don't got both legs. But there's more to life than just fightin', and I intend to help you see that. Leg or no leg, I'm sure you have plenty to contribute, and I'll bet you could be happy at it, too. Plenty of veterans around the strip what are missing bits."

Vulpes scowled at the wall. The doctor paused only a moment before continuing, his tone slightly changed.

"Considering your... inclinations, I thought it best that you were kept restrained for a little while. Just until morning, I think, maybe a little longer. To be safe."

Vulpes didn't dignify him with a response. Instead, he stared intently at the wrinkled wallpaper, finding patterns in the chaos.

* * *

He was left alone in the night, but the old man was back at the crack of dawn, and showed no signs of going away.

The doctor was always in the room with him, reading a yellowed and dogeared book or listening to the radio with his feet propped up on a stool, but he checked in periodically. Vulpes dutifully ignored him as he checked his bandages, and sullenly accepted offered water. He burned with resentment every time the doctor propped his head up with one arm and held the glass to his lips. Some time around midday, the doctor brought him some sort of thin broth, and began the humiliating process of spoon feeding him. After a few mouthfuls, Vulpes turned his head away, wishing again for the scalpel and the restful silence it offered. Better death than this... _degradation_. It only got worse when the old man insisted on bathing him- his skin was peeling off in sheets courtesy of the radiation in the Divide, baring the raw flesh underneath to the dusty air. The doctor sponged delicately around the worst areas, carefully rinsing off the death and debris.

When it was over and he was left alone, he traced shapes in the whorls of the exposed lathe under the torn and faded wallpaper and crumbling plaster. It passed the time and distracted him from the insistent throb of his stump, and the sting of his arm under the tightly wrapped bandages. It also spared him from any possibility of making eye contact with the doctor. Somebody before him had made their own mark in the ancient wood- a clumsy smiley face was carved under a ragged flap of wallpaper. No matter where he looked, his eyes always wandered back to that hollow smile. Soon, though, the light faded, and he was just staring into the darkness, with the knowledge that the carving smiled stupidly back.

His eyes might have closed, for a minute. They shot back open at the tap of claws on the splintered hardwood, and the sound of animal breath passing tongue and teeth. On impulse, his body lurched, fighting his restraints. Every muscle stood tense and shaking; his eyes turned to the new lantern light that bobbed in the far doorway. His mind filled the blanks with glowing mismatched eyes and a feral grin, and metal arms that reached and invaded.

"Relax, son, it's me, you're safe," came the doctor's voice, sounding slightly alarmed. But there were still clawed footsteps, and something was walking his way, and he could feel his heart straining in his throat, and every breath tore ragged from between gritted teeth, and-

"Cheyenne, stay!"

A hand fussed at the lantern, and its light grew brighter. Three shapes resolved from the dim- the doctor, who was bustling around the room turning on various light fixtures, a young woman in leathers holding the lantern, and a large dog that panted dumbly as it looked back at the girl. Vulpes swallowed down his panic, squeezed his eyes shut, and pressed his head back into the cot. His hands betrayed him, trembling where they were restrained.

More lights came on, glowing red through his closed eyelids. Footsteps, and a shadow over him. He focused on his breathing.

"You're all right, son," the doctor soothed again, and Vulpes' face twitched with the ghost of a sneer, bristling at the _kindness_. "Sunny?"

"Hi," the woman said uncertainly, slowly coming closer, but still standing off the doctor's shoulder. "I'm Sunny Smiles. Doc Mitchell asked for my help to look after you, until you're better."

"She'll be here to get you anything you need while I sleep and take care of other patients," Doc Mitchell explained.

Finally satisfied that his panic was reigned in, if not entirely quashed,  Vulpes opened his baleful eyes and turned his head toward the woman, really looking this time.

She was small, and young. Her face was open and honest and kind; it was the same sort of naive country niceness that he'd seen in so many conquered tribes, and a near relative to the almost paternal care the doctor tried to inflict upon him. It was the dumb good nature that glued communities together and invited in the danger that tore them apart.

It was paired with a full set of gecko leather armor and a lightweight rifle, and in his eyes it all added up to an idealist do-gooder who survived only because she never left the relative safety of her town. It also suggested that her role here was less sicknurse and more prison guard, watching and keeping him from doing anything... permanent.

His eyes flicked to the doctor with some disgust. The doctor made a mildly dissatisfied _hrm_ noise and checked Vulpes' bandages one more time.

"How's the pain?" he asked. Vulpes glowered at him, but he didn't respond. The pain was downright distracting, but he wouldn't give them the satisfaction of knowing. The doctor frowned, the corners of his mustache dipping. "I can give you something to dull it down, but without knowing how much you're hurting, it's hard to figure out the dosage."

 _Good,_ Vulpes thought bitterly. _Get the dosage wrong. Let me die._ As if he could read Vulpes' thoughts, the doctor's frown deepened, dark lines creasing into his forehead. Still, he measured out a dose of Med-X and carefully injected it into Vulpes' uninjured arm. Cold numb radiated up through his veins.

"Everything is looking good," he said at last, setting aside the empty syringe, "We'll take those bandages off in the morning and see how you're healing up. But I'm an old man, and right now it's time for me to go to bed. Sunny will be here if you need her. Good night."

There was a quiet moment as the doctor shuffled from the room, leaving Vulpes and the woman to their thoughts.

"I'm sorry if I startled you," the woman said after several long seconds. Her footsteps and a slight scuff told him that she'd taken a seat in the doctor's desk chair, but he wasn't about to crane his neck to make sure. "Doc Mitchell said you were asleep and we didn't want to wake you."

The dog padded closer to his cot, and he tensed again. When a cold nose nudged at his hand, he instinctively jerked away from the touch, straining against the leather straps. Oh, he _knew_ it was just a mutt, but he could still hear the Courier's manic laughter ringing in the silence.

"Down, Cheyenne!" Sunny ordered quickly, evidently seeing his discomfort. "I'm sorry," she said again, "I didn't think that you might be afraid of dogs-"

"I am _not_ ," Vulpes spat, unable to stop himself, "afraid of _dogs_."

There was a heavy silence. For a moment, Vulpes anticipated yet another apology from the girl, but she stayed quiet.

"What's your name?" she eventually asked instead. He ignored her. The world was beginning to retreat pleasantly into the distance, far enough away that he just couldn't bring himself to care about it. It took the pain with it- it was there, but one step removed, and easily ignored. Just sound drifting in from another room.

He rested his eyes.

* * *

Sunny Smiles left at dawn, when Doc Mitchell woke up. After a coffee and a smoke, the doctor changed his bandages, and Vulpes got his first look at the stump.

It was smooth and raw pink, striated with angry scar tissue. One deep line crossed the bottom of the stump laterally, and there were strange bulges where muscle tissue had been cut short and folded over bone. The entire area was tender, twinging every time the doctor probed at it, but very much _healed_ \- they'd used a stimpak on him. Town this small, it must have been serious then. That kind of medical equipment might come easy to wasteland juggernauts like the Courier, but out in the boonies, it was a treasured commodity and a last resort.

The muscle of his calf twitched, and the bulbous tip of his stump twitched painfully with it. He could feel the gorge rising in his throat. He'd have preferred an open, gaping wound.

And then the doctor swept in with fresh bandages, glanced at his patient's face, and perhaps strategically situated himself so Vulpes couldn't see his leg anymore.

"Now, it looks healed, but it ain't really," the doctor said, laying down a base layer of gauze before moving to cotton bindings. The used bandages sat in a heap between Vulpes' legs, stained yellow with pussy drainage. "It needs time to set in. I had to anchor your muscles to the bone, and it'll be another week or so before I'd trust them to bear weight. And your leg will hurt, of course. That should get easier with time, too, but it's normal for you to feel some residual pain and sensation."

Vulpes knew about phantom pain. Enough Legionaries had lost limbs over the years that it was pretty common knowledge among the rank and file that some of them could still feel the limb they'd lost, claiming they could feel their fists painfully clenching even while there was no fist to see.

He couldn't feel anything in the leg that wasn't there. Just the dull, burning ache in his stump.

"So, in a week or so, we'll see about getting you on your feet again. Foot," the doctor corrected himself with a kind but joyless smile.

"What?" Vulpes asked as his attention drifted back to his caretaker, voice hoarse and muted with disuse.

"I said I think I got a pair of crutches around here, and soon we can try to put together a prosthetic for you, and you can be out and about again." A pause as the doctor's eyes bored into his. "Maybe find you some work around town, keep you busy."

 _Keep me distracted_ , Vulpes translated. _Keep me from killing myself. Or killing you. But-_

“I’ll… be able to walk?”

“With some practice, and time,” the old man replied carefully, “you should be able to walk just fine, I think.”

He was struck once again by the doctor's small town foolishness. It would be safer for him and his people to have let Vulpes die rather than risk the whole settlement and waste supplies on a stranger. There were reasons the Legion didn't treat the wounded indiscriminately. You don't patch a man up if you know he wants you dead, or even if you’re unsure. You just help nature along with a bullet to the head.

The doctor finished wrapping Vulpes' leg back up, clipped the end of the bandage to the bulk of it, and moved on to Vulpes' arm. It stung when the bandage was peeled back; dried blood pulled at his skin. This wound, he had no problem looking at- fine black stitches lined the long cut, keeping it closed. The skin was puffy and pink, but there was no sign of infection. Making a noise of thoughtful approval, the doctor pressed fresh gauze over the injury and neatly bandaged it again. When he was finished, he gathered up the dirty bandages and dropped them into a waste bin in the corner.

True to his word, the doctor didn't strap Vulpes back down to the cot. However, Vulpes noticed he _had_ wheeled his cart of surgical implements elsewhere, leaving nothing behind that Vulpes could hurt himself with even if the doctor left him alone long enough to try something. And he didn't- he vanished a few times to relieve himself or get food, but he was never gone longer than a minute, and both men were well aware that Vulpes wasn't getting anywhere fast. When the doctor had taken a book into the bathroom with him the first time, he'd given the wall an experimental shove and found that, while the cot rocked slightly, it did not roll. The wheels had been locked. Between that, his stump of a leg, the inconvenience of the catheter, and the persistent fuzziness of chems in his head, it looked like he'd be doing a lot of staying put.

He picked idly at his leg bandages, sitting upright and leaning one shoulder against the wall. The doctor took a seat at his desk a few yards away, politely keeping his back half-turned as he scrawled out a few letters, referred to a few tattered books. He wasn't good at hiding his backwards glances, however, and soon enough he put down his pen and turned in his chair.

"So what's your name, son?"

Vulpes' eyes flicked briefly to the doctor, but his expression remained flat and disinterested. He quickly turned his attention back to his hideous stump.

"Those boys that brought you in..."

Wherever the doctor had intended to take that, he let it drift away with a shake of his head.

"You got any folks out there we can reach out to? Family, friends? A home?"

"...No," Vulpes heard himself reply. "No home." The leg bandages had come unclipped; he fussed with it for a moment before hooking it back into the fabric, pressing hard enough to feel the bite of the metal teeth in his tender flesh.

"Well, that's not too unusual these days. But with the big fray at the Dam over and done with, maybe things can calm down and you can find a place to settle in." There was an odd glint of suggestion in the doctor's eye. If he was trying to tell Vulpes he could call his podunk little town home, he had another think coming. Part of Vulpes’ plans when they had won the Dam, _if_ they had won the Dam, was to exterminate every last piece of dissolute scum in the Mojave. Vegas would have burned; the only thing that would have saved _this_ place was its inhabitants sheer ignorance of the world around them and the fact that they didn’t even _have_ enough chems or alcohol to abuse.

"Where _am_ I?" Vulpes asked, following through on that train of thought and realizing he didn't know. Last he remembered, he was sprawled across a floor in Primm. And then, with a frown, he added, “And why are you helping me?” It was one thing to assume it was country foolishness that made the old man so hospitable, but Vulpes would have been a fool himself if he didn’t try to make sure.

"This is Goodsprings," the doctor said with a smile, maybe proud that he'd taken interest in his little town, maybe just glad his patient was interacting. "We're not a big settlement, but we're a quiet one. We don't get much trouble out here. The men who left you with me made a good call, bringing you here instead of trying to get you to New Vegas. As for why I’m helping you- it’s just the right thing to do. You’re not the first poor soul that I’ve looked after pro bono, and you won’t be the last, I’m sure."

"Goodsprings," Vulpes echoed. He knew of the village of course, but he'd never had cause to actually visit. It was never that important of a location; it was only recently settled, nothing happened here, nobody lived here, and it was so remote and inconveniently placed that there wasn't even cause to pass through. And yet, something about it niggled at the back of his mind. Goodsprings. Goodsprings...

Nothing came to him. Itching with dissatisfaction, he laid back on the cot, and gingerly rolled onto his aching side. His stump sat strangely on his other leg; somehow, knowing he _should_ feel the weight of the leg made him much more unpleasantly aware that it wasn't there. With every movement, he could feel the catheter tube pulling unpleasantly against the band that strapped it to the upper thigh of his whole leg.

They thought they could get him "back on his feet again."  He didn't dare think too hard about that; he half wished the whole leg were gone, with nothing left behind to taunt him. The rest of him, though, ached to prowl the wastes again like nothing had changed. He still had two thirds of his leg, and he knew from old legionary amputees that it was easier to get around the more leg you had.

 _Get around_. Not run, not hunt. He curled his fingers into his bandages, digging into the pain and grimacing. _Get around_ like the cripple he was. To _get around_ is to hobble and limp and hop. To _get around_ is to survive, not live.

 _As if you_ ever _really lived_ , he jeered at himself. _All you've ever done is survive_.

And even survival seemed unlikely. Sooner or later, the Courier would come for him, and no cripple can outrun a galloping night stalker. Honestly, his odds wouldn’t be great even if he hadn’t been injured in the Divide…

He flinched as he abruptly remembered the ghoul’s blade hacking down through his leg, and the sickening wet squelch of flesh being shaved away from bone. It hadn't hurt when it happened, not the way it should.  Now, a jolt of sympathetic pain shot through the leg that wasn't there. It was like the ghost of every muscle cramped at once; he could feel his missing toes curling, the sinews in the sole of his amputated foot pulled painfully tight. So _this_ is what it was like. He pressed a hand to the back of his truncated calf, massaging the tense muscle.

“Wish I could tell you that’s temporary, but I can’t,” the doctor remarked as he passed by with a full ash tray, glancing to Vulpes. “Part of the package, I’m afraid.”

There was a clatter as Doc Mitchell opened the front door, knocked the ash tray’s contents out into the desert, and came back in.

“Do you read?” he asked, settling back in at his desk and lighting a cigarette. “It’s not much of a selection, but I got a small library here, if you wanted a book or two to pass the time.”

“No,” Vulpes replied. His voice was still hoarse. And then, surprising himself, “Thank you.”

He _could_ read, of course. He wouldn’t have risen far in the ranks if he couldn’t. But as a child, the only reading he had to do was on the front of pill bottles, and as a soldier, he never had much reason to practice. And spying… that was more about talking and listening than it was reading and writing.

As such, his writing was a slow, meticulous block print, neat but too conscious. His reading wasn’t much better. It wasn’t something he did for fun, and it was a weakness he didn’t need the doctor to know about.

“Well, is there anything I _can_ get you?” the doc pressed on. There was a mild edge of concern to his voice. “I don’t like to see a man stew with nothing to set his mind to.”

Vulpes thought for a moment. Mindful of his bruised ribs, he rolled over so he could look at the old man.

“A map.”


	2. Chapter 2

He wasn’t sure why he’d asked for the map, but the crinkle as he smoothed out the creases and laid it across the foot of his cot was somehow reassuring. It reminded him of countless days spent in the shade of Caesar’s tents, pouring over maps and charts, moving improvised markers around to represent the movement of spies, scouts, and regiments. His stump was stretched out in front of him, hidden under the eastern edge of the map; his good leg was curled in toward his body.

Before him laid the areas around “Las Vegas,” complete with the names of dead towns, roads, and counties. The doctor had, after some consideration, allowed him a pencil, on the stipulation that he gave it back when he wasn’t using it. Now, Vulpes was methodically crossing out the old settlements and drawing in the new ones. He penciled in the walls that had been built, scribbled out the roads that had been destroyed.

It was pointless work, but it kept his hands and mind busy. Maps made the world small and manageable. Maps implied a level of control over one’s surroundings. Maps spoke a language of black-and-white ownership and mastery that came more naturally to him than English did.

“They had a whole bunch in the general store,” Sunny Smiles commented as she watched him slowly print the word ‘DEATHCLAWS’ over the site of Quarry Junction. “Chet let them go for free. He says nobody wants them because they’re so old, and nothing’s right on them.”

“The land is the same,” Vulpes murmured vacantly. His pencil ghosted over Ashton, circled it, and circled it again. He only realized how hard he was pressing when the pencil punched right through the map into the coarse sheets below. He frowned, smoothed the puncture on the back of the paper, and continued his work.

“I guess so,” said Sunny. She rested her chin in her hand. “Nothing much seems to change around these parts, anyway.” It didn’t seem to bother her. “So are you from New Vegas, then?”

“No.” His pencil found Goodsprings. Not much had changed, indeed. It had been a tiny little prospector town before the war, and still was. Even the name had survived the centuries unchanged.

“But you know the area, so you’ve lived here a while,” Sunny guessed. Vulpes finally glanced up at her. She wasn’t _prying_ for answers, but her line of questioning was beginning to feel more like a subtle interrogation than an attempt at innocent conversation.

“…I just like maps.” He knew it was weak, but he had trouble thinking through the Med-X, and it was also clear and polite- _stop asking_.

“Sure.” A pause, as she watched him fastidiously add a note to the map. “What’s a fire gecko?”

He looked up at her again, searching for any trace of sarcasm on her face, or any indication of a grievous brain injury.

“A gecko that breathes fire.”

“Huh. Never seen anything like that before,” she said. “I wonder if their skins are fire resistant. They’re really that close to here?”

He blinked, turned his gaze back down to the map, and silently added another ‘FIRE GECKOS’ north of the dam. Sunny leaned back in her chair. She still watched, but Vulpes got the impression she was about as used to conversation as he was, and was willing to slip into a moderately comfortable silence. Outside, crickets chirped in the evening cool.

“Ready to tell me your name yet?”

Vulpes continued to ignore her.

It wasn’t like he could just tell them who he was. Not unless he wanted the NCR to immediately descend on him. At the same time, he’d never really constructed a false identity for himself and he had no idea where to start. Oh, he called himself ‘Mr. Fox’ whenever he visited the strip, but that didn’t count, and anyone with half a brain would see right through it. It was always his inferiors who did the real mingling. He’d skipped straight to the top, with none of the field work that typically came in between. Most of his time was spent standing at attention in Caesar’s tent or wandering the wastes. Caesar’s own personal pet dog.

He frowned suddenly, and glanced around the room.

“Where’s your dog.”

Sunny almost looked guilty, or embarrassed. Her cheeks were flushed pink when she looked up from the baseboard.

“My… a friend’s looking after her. Sure you don’t want to tell me your name?”

No response, apart from an annoyed glower.

“You didn’t eat your dinner,” Sunny said, giving conversation one more stab. She poked at the chipped plate on the desk. The doctor had given him some sort of banana yucca mash; most of it was still on the plate.

His pencil found Nellis, and he painstakingly marked it as a no-go zone. Then, with a heavy exhale, he laid the pencil down in a crease on the map, leaned sideways against the wall, and looked over his work. He was nowhere close to finished, but his cramped notes and corrections covered the yellowed paper, transforming it into a Mojave he could recognize. He had, in a way, restored some order to the world.

He must have zoned out, because he didn’t hear the woman stand up, and only vaguely noticed when she took the pencil away, to be locked up in the doctor’s desk drawer with the other the potential instruments of suicide the doctor called office supplies. He only blinked and looked up from the map when a glass of water was shoved under his nose.

“I’m not going to make you eat the rest of your food, but you have to stay hydrated,” Sunny said. She was, Vulpes decided as he took a sip from the glass, remarkably solemn for a person named Sunny Smiles.

Hydrated for what, exactly? As far as Vulpes was concerned, his continued existence was, at best, an inconvenient waste of resources in a _literal desert_. As Lucius had so accurately stated, there was no place for him in this _beautiful_ new society.

He must have made a face. Sunny was staring firmly at him.

“It’s not the end of the world,” she said. “You’re lucky. In a few days you should be walking again.”

“On crutches,” Vulpes couldn’t help but grumble into the glass. If he was lucky, he might be too slow for the Courier to enjoy hunting him, but that seemed unlikely. Outright death still seemed kinder.

“We’re hearing stories from the city about soldiers making do with a lot less than a leg and a half.”

To his knowledge, those soldiers didn’t have two armies and a crazed monster interested in seeing them suffer.

“They,” he finally said, “are not me.”

“No,” Sunny agreed as she sat back down. “They count their blessings. You do everything you can to convince yourself they’re curses.”

He couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Instead, he folded the map back up again, tucked it under his pillow, and gingerly stretched out across the mattress. Sunny understood the conversation was over. Without being told, she lowered the light from the oil lamp on the desk, and leaned back to keep watch while he slept.

* * *

He woke up in the night, stone cold sober with a terrible headache and a bone-deep dread that made his joints itch, that made him want to bolt, find footing on a foot he didn’t have and run until he collapsed. For the first time in days, his thoughts felt crystal clear under the pain.

_This_ , he thought as he lay motionless on the cot, staring wide-eyed at the wall, _is going to be very bad._

During the day, under the warm haze of Med-X, it was too easy to hold the pervasive, all-consuming terror at arm’s length. Now, in the cold of night, when he could feel every ache and pain his journey into the Divide had left him with, he remembered. He remembered every terrible detail. The ghouls, the sandstorm, the creatures in the night. And after the leg wound, when everything had gone strange as infection set in, he remembered the darkness and the monsters waiting in it.

Goodsprings was too close to the Divide. They sat barely an inch apart on the map Sunny had gotten him- just one inch standing between him and the Courier, and the Courier with nothing better to do than collar him and tug him around the Mojave on a leash-

He sucked in a shuddering breath, and reached a hand out to brush his fingertips against the smiley face that watched from the wall. He pressed his palm flat against the wood, covering it. He could still feel the eyes on him.

And not the _girl_ , he knew about _her._ She didn’t matter. But the Courier- the Courier was always watching. Always. And four legs move faster than two, and it had been onetwothreefour, _how_ many days?

He withdrew his hand from the wall to grasp at the sheets, and stared at the faint smiley face.

_This is bad. This is bad. This is bad._

* * *

The catheter came out in the morning, to Vulpes’ combined discomfort and relief. The minute the doctor had spent on the removal had felt more like an hour of indignity, but then it was over, and he was happier for it. It was hard to maintain appearances when your piss hung in a bag on your bed.

He was also given the opportunity to clean up. Doc Mitchell brought a bucket, soap, and a rag to Vulpes’ cot. His burnt skin was healing quickly, and it felt good to clean off the grime of the sickbed.

To his annoyance, though, he wasn’t allowed to shave.

“I’ll shave you,” the old man offered, bushy eyebrows raised, “But only if you agree to restraints. No offense, son, but I don’t quite trust you with a razor right now.”

But it had only been half an hour since the catheter, and a few minutes since Vulpes was naked and gingerly cleaning himself, so he refused on the principal that he only had so much pride to lose and he needed to start rationing it.

“Did you sleep alright?” Doc Mitchell asked as he threw Vulpes’ towels into a basket into the corner. “Sunny said she thought you woke up.”

“…I slept fine.”

“Well, I’ve been weaning you off the painkillers, so it wouldn’t surprise me if you woke up with some pain or withdrawal symptoms.”

“No.”

The doctor gave Vulpes a strange look, as though evaluating him. Then he shook his head, and took the bucket to the bathroom to dump the water out.

The moment Doc Mitchell left the room, Vulpes pulled his map from under his pillow, spread it across his lap, and pored over its western limits. A quaking finger touched down upon the site of the canyon wreckage.

Goodsprings was just too _close_. North into the mountains felt like the safest direction; the Courier had never spent much time in the north, but that meant Quarry Junction, and Quarry Junction was dangerous enough even when he could actually run and dodge.

It seemed to him his only realistic option was to get to Primm, and perhaps hitch a ride with a caravan. But Primm meant Lucius.

Lucius. The betrayal cut deep. He wasn’t clear on the details of that day, but he remembered every poisonous word that had come out of the Praetorian’s mouth.

He got the sense that Lucius had quite a following. Once you had more than a couple dozen people moving in the same direction, it became a logistical nightmare. He knew first-hand: moving an army across barren desert was far from easy work, and he’d been assisting Caesar with the task for years. There was food to consider, and water; larger groups meant foraging was less viable, which meant carts with supplies. Carts meant guards, which meant guns, ammo, and _more supplies_. There would be disease in such a dense group, with limited sanitation, and it seemed likely Lucius would be taking women, children, elderly, and infirm back to Flagstaff with him. Even if they’d left the moment they’d knocked Vulpes out and sent him to Goodsprings, they couldn’t have gotten farther than Nipton, or maybe Camp Searchlight. Even with a bum leg, there was a serious possibility that Vulpes could catch up with the tail end of the procession. And that was assuming they’d left already- it was just as possible that they still lingered in Primm.

He exhaled heavily through his nose and pressed the heel of his palm to his forehead. He’d been buzzing with subdued anxiety since the night previous, and trying to find safe passage in these hostile lands was only making things worse.

“You’re sure you’re feeling okay?” Doc Mitchell had come back. Instead of a bucket, he had an armful of books.

“I’m fine!” he snapped, shifting where he sat to angle towards the wall and away from conversation. Forcing a calm breath, he repeated- “I’m fine.” The doctor grunted enigmatically as he eased himself back into his desk chair and cracked open a battered hard-cover. Vulpes buried himself in his map again, swallowing his panic every few seconds.

Why even bother with the map? Why bother pretending he could run when he couldn’t even walk?

No. If he’d acted like this after the first battle lost at the Dam, they never would have lasted long enough to see a second. He had to calm down and _think_. Forget the Courier, and consider the _creature_. This was solid ground, and already Vulpes felt his thoughts going still. Reduce it to data; this is what he was good at. And what did he know?

He knew that the Courier had put his brain into a night stalker. Not only did he have the snake’s venom and the coyote’s mobility, he also had a man’s brain, and that wasn’t always a good thing. How long had be been in his new body? How used to it could he really be? Vulpes had assisted with the acquisition of food for the Legion hounds, and he knew exactly how much a carnivore the size of a night stalker would need to eat. He had sat in on dozens of reports from scouting parties, the vanguard, and Lanius himself and could accurately guess how much ground such a creature could cover in a day. People would notice very quickly if a pack of night stalkers suddenly emerged from the canyon. Even if nobody ever saw one, they would see the trail of picked carcasses left in the pack’s wake. It would be a massive undertaking to keep all those mouths fed. If the Courier gave chase, there would be signs.

_He didn_ _’t follow us out of the Divide, though_ , Vulpes thought suddenly. The thought gained mass, solidifying into something with meaning. _Why didn_ _’t he follow us out of the Divide? We know he can travel in those beams of light. He knew we were in no shape to fight him. He could have killed us there._

But the strength of a dog, and the strength of a night stalker, is in the pack, isn’t it? The Courier can beam instantly into new locations, but his pack can’t. Either he wanted them to live and let them go, or he feared being too far removed from the safety of his pack and known terrain.

No, maybe not fear. Caution, and a strong sense of vulnerability. He’d just gotten himself a shiny new body and he wasn’t ready to part with it. He might scout under the cover of his camouflage, but until he had the pack around him, he’d be careful to keep a low profile.

A wave of unexpected relief hit Vulpes hard enough to make him look up from his map, blinking, to the smiley face on the wall. In the light of day, it was reassuring, as though the carving was in on the secret.

_He_ _’s not going to come for you. Not yet. You have time._

Smiling had never come naturally to him, and he didn’t attempt it now. Instead, he neatly folded his map again, and looked to his doctor.

“Do you have any books about snakes?”

* * *

Sunny Smiles arrived to Vulpes sitting at the doctor’s desk, squinting at a book.

“Hey, Doc,” she murmured, hesitating in the middle of the room. Mitchell was sitting in an arm chair he’d dragged into the room, feet propped up as he read a book of his own. At her entrance, he folded down the corner of the page and closed the book.

“Good evening, Sunny. I leave the patient in your attentive care.” A little more quietly, in mock secrecy, “He’s reading about snakes.”

“Snakes,” Sunny repeated as Doc Mitchell rose from the chair and shuffled off to bed. “Any reason?”

Vulpes didn’t look up from the book. He’d been struggling with the same page for a minute, now, and he’d almost cracked it.

“…Can’t be too careful.”

“A man who’s interested in maps and snakes.” Sunny sank into the doctor’s armchair. It was unpleasantly warm, but incredibly comfortable. “You’re full of surprises.”

Vulpes shot her a dark look, and turned the page. Doc Mitchell only had one book that discussed snakes in any detail, and it was some sort of exotic animal veterinarian textbook. The Latin words were easy for him to understand, but he had to sound them out first, and some were longer than any word had the right to be. He was learning a lot about mouth rot and parasitic mites, but not much about how snakes actually functioned.

“So, was there anything _specific_ you were looking for?” Sunny asked after Vulpes had been staring in consternation at the same page for several minutes, his chin propped on the heel of one palm and his fingers curled over his mouth. “About snakes?”

“I want to know… how they sense things, and how well.”

“Oh.” She still watched Vulpes from her seat several yards away. “Just, out of curiosity, you want to know this.”

“There are snakes everywhere,” Vulpes growled into his book. “Can’t be too careful.”

Especially when some snakes moved around on four legs and had fangs the size of hunting knives.

The Courier thought he had upgraded by putting his brain into a night stalker, but Vulpes had seen the beasts. Half coyote, half rattlesnake, and all monster- with one canine eye and one snake eye, how well could it actually see? Did it smell with its nose or its tongue? And its hearing- as far as Vulpes knew, rattlesnakes didn’t even _have_ ears. Even if he’d chosen to put himself into something that was all one animal, the Courier would have had to adjust to his new way of navigating the world. But how do you acclimate to something so ill conceived?

Poorly, Vulpes hoped. And rule one of combat was always to know your enemy. There were no books on night stalkers, and he already knew a fair bit about dogs, and coyotes in extension, but snake biology was a mystery to him.

And so, he focused once more on the book, flipping page by page and painstakingly searching for some sort of photograph or illustration that suggested useful information, without caring about how stupid he must look for skipping the words and honing in on the pictures. For the sake of survival, he’d sacrifice all the pride he’d ever cultivated. For a chance at real victory, he’d give even more.

“I won’t be here tomorrow night,” Sunny mentioned suddenly, picking at a pulled thread on her chair’s arm. Vulpes paused in his page flipping, eyes fixed on the book but ears perked. He was listening. “I’m the town’s guard. I hunt the geckos, keep them away from the spring, make it safe for folks to get their water, that sort of thing. I’m going out tomorrow for a hunt.”

Vulpes said nothing, but neither did he continue trying to wring useful information out of the text book.

“I think Doc was going to ask Trudy to come take my place.”

The patient’s scowl said _I don_ _’t need a babysitter_. His mouth said, “Who is Trudy.”

“Mayor of Goodsprings,” Sunny told him, leaning forward in the chair to cross her arms on her knees. “She runs the bar.”

Vulpes grunted enigmatically, and turned another page of his book. At this rate, the whole town would visit him in the doctor’s house before he could recover enough to leave.

He picked through the book for another hour before finally giving up. The book closed with a pulpy _whump_ , and he carefully stood up, hopped the three feet to his cot, and hoisted himself onto it. When he curled up with his back to the girl and the light, he met the smiley face’s gaze with some satisfaction of his own. When the Courier came, he would be ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, this is about as short as the chapters in this fic get. x_x Settle in; I was genuinely not kidding when I said this thing was LONG.
> 
> Thank you all for your kudos and comments! It's so encouraging and I'm very grateful!


	3. Chapter 3

The next day, the doctor gave him crutches.

“Just take it slow and easy,” he said, even as Vulpes lowered himself from the cot with the crutches under his arms. “You’ll want to keep them vertical- hang on.” He all but snatched the crutches back from Vulpes, who growled his irritation and only reluctantly let them go. He leaned against the cot and watched the doctor like a hawk as he adjusted the height of the crutches, shortening them by a couple inches. Then, they were handed back, and Vulpes was across the room in a shot, glad to be moving at a reasonable pace again. He hadn’t moved more than five feet in days, and he was going stir crazy. The crutches at least offered _some_ freedom.

“You don’t want to lean on them,” Doc Mitchell coached from the sidelines, watching Vulpes with a critical eye. “Support your weight on your hands, and balance with the parts under your arms.”

The spy altered his stance slightly, and crossed the room back to the cot. He could feel the stitches in his arm pulling slightly as he went, but they didn’t hurt, and he wasn’t about to mention it to the doctor- he wasn’t going to give him an excuse to take the crutches away.

“Very good,” Doc praised warmly.

“I want to go outside.”

“Now, I don’t-”

Vulpes leveled him a flat, unyielding glare that stopped him mid-sentence.

“I’m going outside.” And if the doctor tried to stop him, he’d get a crutch to the face. Apparently he realized this, because Doc Mitchell just sighed, led Vulpes to the door, and held it open for him.

The sun was _bright_. This was the first thing Vulpes noticed as he swung himself outside. For days, its rays had been filtered through windows that had been frosted by centuries of sandstorms and hadn’t been cleaned in as many years. Now, it blazed down in full glory, nearly blinding Vulpes.

He squinted and blinked for a minute as his eyes adjusted. The heat soaked into his skin like an old friend. Slowly, the world resolved into focus, and Vulpes realized he was looking down on the town of Goodsprings from a hilltop. From here he could see the saloon, and what could only be the general store Sunny Smiles had mentioned. Some bighorners were grazing on whatever tough desert grasses they could find in their pen down below, and a few farmers raked at the dust and babied the few corn stalks they had managed to grow.

“I know you’ll just do what you like regardless,” Doc Mitchell said dryly from behind him, “but it wouldn’t be easy for you to get down that hill on crutches, and even harder for you to get back up it. It’s all loose sand and gravel.”

A fair point, and Vulpes conceded to it. There was a splintery bench outside the house, and Vulpes carefully settled on it. The doctor sat down beside him with a grunt and much rubbing of his knees. Vulpes ignored him and looked out to the cliffs beyond Goodsprings, and the roads off in the hazy distance. To the north, a water tower stood on a hill overlooking the town.

“Yeah, it’s a nice little settlement,” Doc said contentedly, out of the blue. A faint smile showed in the creases around his eyes as he watched the town below. “You know, all us in town, we used to be travelers. Prospectors, like a lot of folks. But then we found Goodsprings, all neat and tidy as you like and just waiting for the people to come back. And Trudy, god bless ‘er, she got it back up and running again. Even got some traders to move their supply routes so they ran through town. Yep, it’s a good town. A good town.”

A few distant gunshots, and both men went quiet and still where they sat, heads cocked.

“That’ll be Sunny,” Doc Mitchell eventually concluded. “Up at the springs. She clears them out every few days, but the geckos always come back.”

“They’ll stop if you find the nest and burn it,” Vulpes said absently, listening to the periodic echoes of the woman’s rifle as he fell back into his advisory autopilot by habit.

“Well,” Doc said with a shrug, “You wander too far out of town and you got cazadores and radscorpions on your hands, on top of the geckos. Besides, Sunny makes a good living off the hides, and there’s always a use for nice leather armor in these parts.” A sidelong glance. “But a man with your background would know that.”

Vulpes snapped back to attention and returned the glance, his hackles prickling instinctively. But the old man was conscientiously looking the other way, admiring the way the heat shimmered over the hot earth-

The spy blinked several times, and squinted at the lane that ran through Goodsprings. The shimmer was moving in a way it shouldn’t. His blood froze in his veins, and he could only stare in abject terror, trying to figure out what he was seeing.

The shimmer moved closer, along with a gust of hot dry air. Immediately, Vulpes’ tense body relaxed enough to tremor with the sudden spike of adrenaline. It was just a tumbleweed, camouflaged with the ruddy earth and bumbling along with the breeze.

“Do you want to head back in?”

Vulpes watched the tumbleweed for several more seconds, hands clenched into fists around the vertical bars of his crutches to keep them from shaking. Finally, he turned his head to the doctor, ashen and distracted.

“…What did you say?”

“I said we should be heading back in,” Doc Mitchell said kindly, not quite able to hide the knowing concern in his expression. He braced his hands against his knees and levered himself to his feet. “I’ll get some lunch going.”

Without argument, Vulpes pulled himself onto his crutches and followed the old man back inside, peering over one shoulder at the tumbleweed until the door closed behind him.

* * *

He held his hand palm-down over his thigh, watching it shake and wondering when that had started. And more than that, was it the chems, or was it nerves? He wanted to blame the Med-X, but the doctor was barely giving him any now, as evidenced by the persistent throbbing headache and strange, hungry irritability.

He knew he should be glad to get clean of the filth, but the Med-X _helped_. It pushed away all the nasty and gave him some breathing room away from the pain and the fear. On the pauper’s ration he was given that morning, he was nose to nose with panic.

He closed his hand into a fist, and that shook too.

“So you’re him.”

His hand immediately dropped into his lap as his eyes snapped to the doorway. A woman stood in it, wearing a floral patterned dress and heavy leather boots. She was around his age, maybe a few years younger. Her experience showed in every weather-worn line on her face.

“I’m Trudy,” she said, inviting herself in. Her footsteps weren’t loud, but they were heavy, and decisive. This, Vulpes thought as she approached, was a woman who had put miles of desert behind her in those boots. She wore a dress to look nice for the customers, but those boots- she could walk the walk.

“Trudy, the Mayor of Goodsprings,” Vulpes elaborated on her behalf, cagey and flat.

A strained smile stretched across her lips. She pulled the doctor’s desk chair around to sit in it, facing him. Her feet were firmly planted on the floor, arms laid neatly on the rests. Confidence, power. She _earned_ her position, his instinct said, while at the same time it shouted _she means business, she_ _’s_ dangerous _._

“You’ve got the advantage of me,” she said. When Vulpes’ face stayed carefully blank, “You know who I am. Who are you?”

Training kicked in. The blank stare he wore when an idiom was lost on him was swapped out for the blank stare he wore when he understood what was wanted from him and he had no intention of giving it up.

They sat in a silent stalemate for a long, tense minute. Trudy let her eyes drop to the floor after a while, but there was still a faint, grim smile on her lips, and it was clear this wasn’t submission. When Vulpes stayed quiet, she lifted her gaze again.

Vulpes knew the power of a stare. He knew his stare _cut_ , surgically opening up the psyche and rearranging the furniture. The Courier, his swallowed you up, inviting you into his own personal brand of crazy. But Trudy’s eyes burned. She didn’t want to compel or coerce, she just wanted to read the sins in your eyes and purge them with fire.

“Let me make this easier for you. We know you’re with Caesar’s Legion,” she said. He stayed carefully impassive, though his heart seized painfully. His fingers tugged at the frayed edge of the gauze on his thigh. “The men who brought you here were military, or ex-military, which tells me you are too, if your injuries and the armor weren’t enough, but if they were NCR they would have been wearing the fatigues. And there’s your weird as hell accent. You’re not from the NCR, and you’re sure as hell not from New Vegas.”

“Utah,” Vulpes suggested with a scowl. English was his mother tongue, but he’d been forced to speak only Latin since he was a child and language attrition was a bitch. He’d fought tooth and nail to retain his vocabulary and grammar, but there was nothing to be done about his flat accent.

“Legion,” Trudy countered sharply.

 Vulpes sat motionless for a full second, then thawed, his eyebrows pricking slightly upwards.

“I believe I was also wearing Republic armor, unless those worms stole it before they dumped me here,” he pointed out. He wasn’t making an argument, just conversation. She knew. There was no point in really trying to convince her she didn’t. Especially not now, when the Legion had never stood for less.

“Only a Legion soldier would refer to the NCR as ‘The Republic,’ and call their rescuers ‘worms,’” Trudy laughed unkindly. She was still staring intently at Vulpes. “You were wearing black leathers. That’s officer colors, isn’t it?”

Vulpes found it in himself to shrug halfheartedly.

“What I’d like to know is why a Legion officer is sitting in my doctor’s house safe and sound instead of bled out on the dam where he belongs.”

“I’d like to know that myself,” he grumbled under his breath, cursing Lucius again and again. This act of supposed mercy was nothing more than torture, but he would have to be naive to expect anything different from Caesar’s muscle. Louder, and holding up his bandaged arm while gesturing to it with the other, he said “Take it up with the doctor. I’m doing my part; he won’t stop doing his.”

“And that,” Trudy said with a brittle smile, “is the only reason I’m putting up with you in my town. Now, we don’t much like the Legion _or_ the NCR out here. Neither of you have done us any good. But the Legion kills civilians and keeps slaves, and that sits worse with people than the NCR’s bureaucracy. But you didn’t choose to come here, you don’t _want_ to be here, and I imagine you’ll be leaving as soon as you’re able.”

There was a pause as if Trudy expected an answer, but Vulpes didn’t oblige. Instead, he shifted back on the cot to lean with his back to the wall, his legs not quite crossed in front of him. He was very aware of Trudy’s attention flickering briefly to his stump before returning to his face. Her expression never changed.

“I’ll rephrase. Sunny thinks you’re a sad, broken man with a few screws loose, but she also thinks you’re more or less harmless. Doc Mitchell says you’re all bark and no bite. I think you’ve got plenty of bite left in you, but you should know better than to bite the hand that’s feeding you. When you’re up and moving again, you’re going to _leave_ , and you’re going to remember that Goodsprings took care of you when nobody else would. You’re trouble, and we don’t like trouble here. I don’t expect you to understand gratitude or kindness but I think you’ll understand this- if you hurt anyone in this town, you will regret it every single day of your life. And I will make sure that you live a long, long time. You understand?”

No response. Trudy’s eyes narrowed.

“I asked you a question.”

“I heard you,” Vulpes replied quickly and quietly, right on her heels. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, but- “I understand.”

After another moment to let her message sink in, Trudy stood up. Leaving the chair by his cot, she walked back to the doorway.

“Doc Mitchell is a good man, and he thinks there’s good in everyone else, too. But he grew up in a Vault, bless his heart, and I didn’t. I don’t see any point in babysitting you. I don’t know why Sunny’s wasting her time on you, either. Either you’re safe and sound come morning- fine- or you’re dead, or gone, which is also good with me.” She pointed a single index finger at him in warning. “I _know_ you won’t be… misbehaving. We both know you can’t run if you do, and you know what’ll happen when I catch up. So I’m going to do us both a favor and go home. Enjoy your evening.”

And… she left. For several minutes, Vulpes stayed on the cot, listening hard for any sign of movement outside the ramshackle house, but all he could hear was the doctor’s rattling snore. Was it a trap? It didn’t make much sense for it to be one, but supposing Trudy was biding her time outside, just waiting for Vulpes to come out and give her an excuse to put him down?

No. She seemed more direct than that. If she wanted him dead, he’d be dead already. And as stern as she was, she also seemed honest. Everyone in this godsforsaken town was so _honest_.

He fumbled for the crutches that leaned against the wall at the head of the cot and eased himself onto his foot. His stump dangled awkwardly in the air; he still didn’t really know what to do with it. Moving slowly to keep the noise down, he crossed the room to the main hallway, and the front door. It was unlocked. He let his hand rest on the doorknob for several seconds before finally turning it and opening the door. He left it open behind him as he hobbled to the bench.

The stars shone bright over the hills, painting them silver. A warm breeze rustled through the brush. It was peaceful. It put him on edge. He had spent his entire life surrounded by his Legion brothers. Even on scouting missions, he usually had a handful of Legionaries with him. Nights were never this calm and devoid of life, and he was uncomfortable knowing that one pair of eyes can only see so much.

Slowly, though, he relaxed. This was Goodsprings, not the front. Nobody came here intentionally. There were no jobs, no resources, and nothing to plunder or steal. If the night was quiet, it was because it was truly empty- real, genuine solitude.

Somewhere, a cricket half-heartedly sang into the moonlight alone. Its song squeaked and broke, and eventually it gave up. Vulpes rubbed his palms on his thighs to ward away the chill as he looked out onto the sleeping settlement.

He supposed he could see why people might like this kind of life. Quiet and remote. Nothing good ever really happened, but that’s because _nothing_ happened, and that kept the bad away too. It was a town that could survive anything, if only because it was small and nobody remembered it. A good place to settle down and sleep.

The thought soured as his eyes drifted to the dark outlines of the cliffs beyond the town. The moment the Courier felt confident enough to come crawling from the ravine, the peace would shatter and the town would fall with barely a whisper. The people here were too used to their quiet lives to survive night stalkers.

He would be far, far away when that day came. He didn’t have to move quickly if he never stopped. And if the Courier ever caught up, he would be ready. But why was his heart still so uneasy?

He sat in the cool night air for a while longer, then wandered back inside. He crutched back to the doctor’s desk, snuffed out the lantern, and sightlessly edged his way to the cot.

When he was lying down, sheets pulled securely over his shoulder, he ran a hand over the wall until he felt the carved smiley face catch on his calluses, his only true friend in this gentle town.

* * *

Vulpes awoke when the doctor did; by the time Mitchell had made breakfast, he was sitting outside again in the pale light of morning. He had spent a lifetime watching sunrises. Somehow, being outside to see them again restored a sense of normalcy to his day. The ground beneath his single bare foot was cool and dusty, and it made him feel real.

There was a creak as the front door opened, and Doc Mitchell backed through with two plates. He handed one to Vulpes and sat down beside him.

“So you met Trudy,” he said as Vulpes poked at the food with his fork. Some sort of mash with gravy, and a diced mystery meat. “It’s gecko,” the doctor said, seeing his patient’s consternation. “What did you think of her?”’

Vulpes shoved a forkful of mash into his mouth to avoid giving an answer beyond a one-shouldered shrug.

“I know she was a little late arriving,” the doctor said delicately, side-eying him. “And she wasn’t here when I got up.”

“…She was here,” Vulpes assured him quietly after swallowing.

“And?”

Vulpes looked at the doctor, who was watching his patient with a keen, if anxious, interest.

“She is… direct.”

This coaxed a hesitant chuckle from the doctor.

“That she is, that she is. A good woman, though. Fair. Always known her to give a man a fair shake.”

“You know I’m Legion,” Vulpes said suddenly, calm as if discussing the weather. He stared blandly out at the barren landscape. The doctor tensed slightly beside him.

“Well,” Doc Mitchell stalled. After a few seconds of consideration, he started again. “It seemed likely, but we weren’t too concerned. One soldier alone ain’t the Legion, if you get my meaning. We figured that without a whole army beside you, you’d be sensible, and you couldn’t do much harm at any rate.”

“And ‘we’ is you and the woman?”

The doctor grunted. He seemed slightly chagrined by it all.

“Mind you, I would have treated you no matter what, but it seemed only fair she knew, this being her town. And so far it’s working out, hm? You haven’t hurt anyone. Apart from yourself, of course, and while I can understand why, I wish you’d try and imagine a future for yourself.”

“You don’t know the life I’ve led,” Vulpes said softly, still gazing out at the hills. “I have seen men burned men alive. I have seen them crucified.” He turned a sharp stare on the doctor from the corner of his eye. “Does a man like me deserve a future?”

Doc Mitchell frowned, clearly troubled, but not horrified as Vulpes might have imagined.

“Son, I don’t reckon it’s my place to decide who gets a future and who doesn’t. I took an oath. You’re a Legion man, you’ll understand this: _primum nil nocere._ _”_

His pronunciation was terrible, but Vulpes still understood. _First, do no harm_.

“That’s ethics,” Mitchell continued sagely. “That’s my oath. Help where I can, and at the very least, don’t cause more harm. _Who_ I’m helping isn’t important.”

“Who you’re helping is the only thing that matters,” Vulpes argued. His brow furrowed deeply. “You could have let me die without causing more harm. Even the Followers of the Apocalypse could live with that.”

At this, the doctor actually smiled, and looked out on his town.

“Ah, well, call me old fashioned. I’m more inclined to help than I am to not harm. In fact, I say choosing not to help when you’re able to _is_ harm.” And to Vulpes’ shock, he turned his head slightly and winked. “I’m also inclined to believe your future is what you make of it. So make it a good one, son.”

Doc Mitchell stood, and took his plate back inside, leaving Vulpes sitting alone and bewildered in the morning light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I confess to making Trudy a bit of an adaptational badass in this fic, if only because I think you HAVE to be one if you're going to be the leader of a remote village in the post-apocalyptic Mojave.
> 
> Thank you all again for your comments and kudos! It's greatly appreciated.


	4. Chapter 4

He paced the length of the room on his crutches, restless in the night. The floorboards creaked and popped underneath him. Sunny watched with her chin in her hand as he passed her time and time again, to reach the far wall, turn, and return.

“Aren’t you tired?” she asked, letting her arms fall crossed across the back of the chair she was straddling.

Vulpes didn’t respond. He crutched up to the door into the hallway, beside old steel shelves of supplies, crossed his crutches, lifted himself into a turn, and covered the short distance back to the cot, where he met the steady stare of the smiley face.

His mind hadn’t settled since his and the doctor’s conversation that morning. No- since Trudy had made her presence known. Something was just… off.

It wasn’t that he felt threatened by these, these… bumpkins, these good-natured simpletons. But that they _knew_ about him somehow drew back the veil. They were in on it somehow. In on the _danger_ , and no longer safe from the machinations that had been set in motion. They had inserted themselves into the narrative. Their unexpected presence did not sit well with him.

“Did you know?” This asked without breaking stride, and only a brief glance thrown towards Sunny Smiles as another lap brought him past her.

“Did I know what?”

“Who I am.”

“None of us know who you are,” Sunny replied. She laid her chin down on her crossed arms. “Your name would be a good place to start.”

Vulpes grimaced, and finally came to rest at his cot, pulling himself onto it and leaning the crutches against the wall. His fingers still twitched with nervous energy as he peered skeptically at his minder.

“Why do you want to know my name.”

Sunny just sighed. It neatly encapsulated an eye roll and hands thrown to the heavens that weren’t worth spending the energy actually performing.

“That’s generally step one, when you meet a new person.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “It’s a small town, but that doesn’t mean we’re uncivilized.”

“You don’t need to know who I am,” Vulpes growled, inexplicably irritable. He pulled his knee to his chin, glowering over it at her, then huffed and laid back, rolling to face the wall.

“According to you, I already do,” her dry response came. Another sigh. “We guessed you were one of those Legion soldiers, but that’s all we know. That doesn’t really tell us who you are. You know, as a person.”

“Surely knowing I’m Legion should be enough.”

“The Legion takes slaves,” Sunny said suddenly. There was a strange note to her voice. “And it’s been around for as long as I can remember. That means that most of the soldiers fighting in it right now probably grew up in it. You can’t help how you’re raised. Especially when you’re raised in an army.”

“It was all for nothing.” He wasn’t sure why he said it, but there it was. The smiley face grinned at him. “Everything I’ve ever done… was for nothing.”

Sunny had the good grace not to respond for a long while.

“I think,” she eventually said, slow and meticulous, “that what you’ve _done_ matters a lot less now than what you _might_ do. You can’t change the past, but there’s always the future.”

“And what future is there, for a cripple?”

“You’re in good hands, here. The best. I’ve seen Doc Mitchell treat folks in far worse shape than you. Hell, I’ve seen him patch up a man who got shot in the head, honest to goodness.”

His heart just about stopped. A dull roar built in his ears. He remembered where he’d heard about Goodsprings.

“Fished out the bullet and everything. He walked out of here practically good as new. Well- he acted real weird, but he was walking and talking, and for all we know, he was _always_ that weird.”

The smiley face leered at him. Panic boiled up in his throat as he lay motionless, every muscle tense. Of course. He _would_ put a smile on the wall. Always smiling, always, and it was never good news. And always _watching_.

“Course, we’re hearing he went on to- well. Doc Mitchell patches you up, but you choose how to spend your second chances. I’m not too sure I approve of how he spent his.”

The scales finally tipped; panic beat out fear, and Vulpes was up like a shot, barely getting his hands on a single crutch before he was flinging himself for the door, struggling to breathe, because _he_ had been here, _he_ had slept in that bed and walked these floors, _he_ had carved a grin in the wall as though he’d known even then, before they’d ever met, that Vulpes would wind up there after him.

Sunny was fast, but Vulpes was too, and unbalanced. He careened off the door frame and toppled in the entry hallway. She was talking at him, frantic, but he wasn’t listening because _he touched this and I touched this and now he_ _’s touching me_. He somehow reached the doorknob and got the door open, and then he was dragging himself outside even as Sunny hovered beside him, terrified and uncertain of what to do but at least aware enough to understand that grabbing him would be a bad move.

Vulpes scrambled forward in the dirt, dirt that _he_ had planted his boots in before, and then he was tumbling down the hill. He lost his crutch along the way, and ended up sprawled at the bottom of the hill with a few new cuts and what would later become a set of spectacular bruises. But he didn’t care, because he was too busy ripping the hospital gown off his body and flinging it as far away as he could, and tearing at his bandages until he was naked and bloody and hyperventilating in the dirt, clawing at his own skin, trying to scratch off any lingering touch of the fabric.

“Oh god, I-”

A hand brushed against his shoulder, and a renewed sense of panic washed over Vulpes. He slapped away the touch, and dragged himself a few feet further away. Silent sobs wracked his body as he hugged his own rib cage and stared terrified out into the brush.

_He_ was watching, he had to be, because he always watched, he _played with his food_. And somehow he _knew_ , that even when Vulpes slipped from his clutches, he would still follow in his wake like a dog on a lead.

“Son?”

Doc Mitchell’s voice. Nausea hit Vulpes like one of Lucius’ punches. He swallowed it back.

“It’s cold out, do you want to come inside?”

It _was_ cold. He did not want to come inside. He wanted to raze the little house on the hill to the ground, and the whole town of Goodsprings with it. Let the Mojave burn. Cleanse it of the Courier’s touch with the purity of fire.

He couldn’t hold back anymore. He vomited his dinner into the dust, and just sat there beside his sick like a chastened dog.

“Do you want to talk?” Doc Mitchell tried again, using his most soothing voice.

“ _Primum nil nocere,_ ” was all Vulpes responded with, bitter and disgusted underneath his shaking, shameful fear. He stared hatefully at the ground. Seeing movement in his peripheral vision, he spat “Don’t touch me!” It came out more scared than authoritative.

Nobody touched him. Sunny sat down on the hard packed earth a couple yards away. He saw her glancing anxiously his way from the corner of his eye, then pull up a handful of scrub grass to twist in her fingers.

“Get away from me.”

“I won’t touch you,” Sunny reassured him softly. There was a quaver to her voice; now that his panic was slowly subsiding, he realized she was rattled.

“Son-”

Vulpes spat viciously in the dirt, and the doctor fell silent with a stressed exhale. After a few moments, he heard the crunch of gravel as the doctor climbed back up the hill toward the house. Sunny stayed.

“This is my fault.”

“ _Go. Away._ ”

She didn’t.

And so they sat in deeply uncomfortable silence. Sunny hugged her knees and stared at anything but the scared, naked man only a few feet away. Vulpes bled into the grit and shivered under the stars, eyes darting constantly around for the tell-tale shimmer of a stealthed enemy. He hadn’t felt this paranoid, bone-deep terror since he was a child.

He thought, for the first time in a long time, of his sister.

She was young, and radiant, with long dark hair that shone copper in the sun. She was still a girl, soft in face and heart, but womanhood was on the horizon and she’d hit a growth spurt. Only a summer before, she stood barely a hand taller than him. But he was a little tall for his age, and she was a bit of a late bloomer. She managed to grow another hand and a half in a year, during a very painful growth spurt that left her thin and leggy like a newborn brahmin.

And she loved him, when he wasn’t sure his own mother did. It was hard to tell, when the children were the tribal custodians and the adults spent their days high on anything they could inject into themselves. His mother was nothing more to him than a vague figure in the periphery, usually half-dazed and connected arm-to-arm with his father by an IV line. And who was he to his father, the leader of a whole tribe, with his harem and a horde of children?

It was Sissy who had raised him- maybe five years older than him, but more his guardian than anyone. He remembered how ecstatic she had been when her last adult tooth had grown in and their father had carved the groove in it, had packed it with the blue dye of the woad plant. She was officially an adult, in the tribe’s eyes, a grown Bluetooth. The shocking blue stripe across her six upper front teeth were the proof and the key to the tribe’s core activity. The _other_ bluetooth. She was part of the pecking order now, a child of two tested and true O- parents, and she could take her place in the great web of chem distribution. Artery to artery, vein to vein, universal donor trickling all the way down to universal recipient- a chemical high shared by blood.

“Like love,” his mother slurred once, when she was in an unusually tender mood. “Love is just chemicals in our blood. We’re sharing our love when we share our blood.”

He was too young to understand blood types, then, but he remembered brooding on the fact that his parents and aunts freely shared their blood and “love” with each other, but they only ever took it from him. Two times they’d taken his blood, when there were accidents that called for clean blood, but nobody had ever given to him. Nobody had ever given him anything, except Sissy, who fed him and clothed him and taught him all she knew.

Vulpes had cried, that day when his sister was marked an adult, inconsolable, though Sissy had _promised_ she wouldn’t join in on the bluetoothing until he had his blue teeth too.

He only had three teeth carved when the Legion came for them. First there were whispers, overheard from passing caravans, and then there were the scouts, and then campfires in the distance. The Blueteeth had uncanny medical knowledge thanks to a visiting Follower many years before, but no drive. They weren’t warriors, just… scavengers. They never stood a chance. Vulpes had realized it even then, though still a child, standing petrified with fear in the center of their chaotic camp, as his multitude of “aunts” and half-siblings stumbled in the dark, blood still dripping where the IVs had been hastily torn out of arms.

His mother, uncharacteristically sober, was the first to notice him, and she had descended on him like a raven, fingers digging into his bony shoulders.

“Find Sissy,” his mother had ordered, her own eyes wide with dread and cheeks stained with tears. “Find Sissy and stay with her. Go!”

She shoved him away, turning to face the first of the advancing troops. It was the last time he saw her. Vulpes stumbled through the camp, vision blurred by his own frantic tears, and suddenly Sissy was there, wrapping her arms around him, shepherding him away into the darkness beyond the camp, half crouched so he could see her face and take comfort.

“It’s going to be okay,” he remembered her whispering to him in a soft, tremulous voice. “Everything will be okay. I promise.”

And she kept promising, as they crouched together in the scrub listening to the screams from the camp and the snarling and baying of hounds, even though they both knew she was lying.

Vulpes blinked, and realized he was crying. He was just a child again, alone and powerless in the wastes, while his enemy prowled just out of sight.

There hadn’t been any stopping the Legion. There could be no stopping the Courier. Only _surviving_ him.

* * *

“Why is there a naked amputee sitting in the road?”

It was dawn, and Vulpes was still sitting where he’d fallen, as cross-legged as he could get with only three quarters of a full set, and bent forward with arms hugging his shoulders to conserve heat. He was still shivering, but he’d refused to let Sunny get him clothes or a blanket. In the end, the hunter had built a small fire beside him out of sheer desperation.

At sunrise, the first of the farmers came out of their homes. One had seen Vulpes and Sunny and their little camp fire and had gone and fetched Trudy, who came out in that pretty blue dress and those heavy, worn boots to have a look for herself.

“We had a rough night,” Sunny said. She was run down; she hadn’t slept all night. But neither had Vulpes, who just _stared._ He’d calmed down considerably during the night, but now he wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t acknowledge her, and he absolutely would not move.

“Honestly, this is bad for business. Can’t you at least… cover him up?” She waved her hand at the man with a grimace of general distaste, eyes flitting across the ugly old whip scars that ticked his back and the new red welts left by his nails raking over his own skin.

“He doesn’t want to wear…” Sunny trailed off. She glanced between Vulpes and Trudy, then stood and walked some distance away, beckoning Trudy to follow. They had a muted discussion, both of them watching Vulpes. Trudy reached out, one hand lightly brushing over Sunny’s elbow. Eventually, Trudy went back to her bar, and Sunny returned to Vulpes.

“I know I messed up,” Sunny said, crouching down a foot feet away from him, “and I know you don’t want to go back into the Doc’s house. But we have to get you out of the road before people get nervous, and it’s not like you can stay here forever anyway.” She paused, peering intently into his face, searching for an indication that he was following. He still had his eyes turned resolutely away from her. “If I get your crutches for you, will you come to the saloon with me?”

He finally looked at her, head turning slowly.

“None of it matters,” he told her. “He’s watching. He knows. None of it matters.”

“If it doesn’t matter, then come with me,” Sunny said, smiling grimly. She retreated up the hill to the house, came back out a moment later with a crutch, and picked up the other on her way back down the hill to Vulpes. Before she handed him the crutches, though, she dropped a bundle of clothes into his lap. He flinched, but she held up a hand. “Doc Mitchell scrounged those up from one of the empty houses. Nobody’s touched them since the war.”

Vulpes unfolded the clothes in his lap. They were leisure wear, and nothing he would ever put on his body. He spent a long minute staring at the pale pink polo and khaki slacks. How had his life come to this? Being gently coaxed into a dead man’s pastel apparel, down one leg and with his entire life gone in a cloud of ash?

At least naked he had dignity. Wearing his own skin, hard and calloused and crossed with scars earned in battle and at the whipping post. Every win and loss, on display, in a show of unprecedented honesty.

He pushed the clothes out of his lap and onto the ground.

“Come on,” Sunny blurted, growing frustrated with the lack of cooperation. “Trudy’s a good person, and I- she’s my friend, but she has Goodsprings’ interests in mind and she’ll kick you out if you don’t _try._ _”_

“There’s no _point_ ,” hissed Vulpes, suddenly vitriolic, and Sunny jerked back. He wished he had the aptitude for casual swearing that seemed so common outside the Legion. Nothing seemed _violent_ enough to describe the real and total hopelessness of his situation.

A sharpness came to his eyes and words. He leaned towards Sunny, mockingly conspiratorial.

“Do you want to know why there’s no point? Because your _doctor_ decided that doing no harm meant pumping a Stimpak into a man with half his brains scrambled and turning him loose on the world, and pretty soon he’ll get bored. And once he gets bored, he’ll come looking for me, because _I,_ _”_ he snarled in utter disgust and self-loathing, “am one of his very favorite playthings. So there’s no point in doing anything, because I can’t _outrun_ him, and I might as well get it over with.”

Sunny closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled through her nose. She opened her eyes again.

“I want to make sure you understand your options, here. Either you can put some clothes on and come to the saloon while we figure out where to put you while you heal, or Doc Mitchell and I will have to sedate you, take you back to his house, and try to get the NCR to take you to one of their medical centers or something. It’s your choice.”

He sullenly met her gaze, and with some hesitation, reached out for the discarded clothes.

* * *

Trudy leaned against the back of her bar, lazily wiping down glasses with a threadbare rag and staring fixedly at Vulpes. Vulpes was perched on a stool at the end of the bar, incredibly uncomfortable and peering sidelong at the saloon’s other patrons. It was the lunch rush, and half the settlement was here for Trudy’s special of fried gecko eggs, gecko steaks, and- who ever would have guessed- gecko sausage.

She’d plunked a plate down in front of Vulpes, but he had no appetite, and didn’t touch it. Instead, he watched with reined in disgust as Easy Pete demolished two plates of runny eggs a few stools away. The yolk clung to his mustache in goopy strings. The sight made Vulpes’ stomach turn. His mouth twisted into a deep frown, and he stared intently at a patch of nothing  behind the bar.

“You going to eat that?” Trudy asked him, reaching a hand out and gripping his plate by its rim. Vulpes didn’t react, and then she was whisking it away, sliding it down the bar to rest in front of Pete. “On the house,” she told him, a sly smirk in her voice.

“Well, thank you kindly,” Easy Pete said with a grin, breaking the yolk under the tines of his fork. He turned his grin on Vulpes once the idea slowly came together in his head that _he didn_ _’t eat this food and it became mine so he practically gave it to me_. “Say, friend, I ain’t never seen you ‘round-”

“Keep not seeing me,” Vulpes cut him off with a hoarse snarl, still staring at nothing. Easy Pete raised his eyebrows but didn’t seem too offended. With a good natured shake of his head, he turned back to his plate.

Trudy sidled back down to Vulpes’ end of the bar and leaned forward on her elbows, arms crossed, until her face was level with his and only a foot or so away.

“That wasn’t very kind,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear.

“ _I_ _’m_ not very kind.”

Trudy quirked her eyebrows, nodded reflectively, then met his eyes.

“…What would make you happy?” she asked, catching him off guard. “Truly happy.”

He blinked at her as he leaned back in his stool, putting more distance between them. What _would_ make him happy? Seeing the Courier dead? Caesar being alive and well? But that raised the question- was he happy _before_ they came to New Vegas?

“You’re unkind because you’re unhappy,” Trudy mused, watching him flounder. “Here’s a tip from me to you: find something to be happy about, and it’ll be easier to be kind. And, you know, being kind can make you feel good in its own right.” She pushed off the bar as a Goodsprings settler dropped a few caps beside their empty plate and left. “Kindness is free,” she said, speaking over the chatter that filled the room, “and priceless.”

She didn’t bother him again through the rest of the lunch rush, and eventually the last rancher drifted out the door, leaving just the two of them. Trudy busily wiped down tables and collected dirty dishes; Vulpes contemplated the scratches in the bar top. After a while, he spoke, without looking up.

“I’ll do you a kindness,” he said. He felt distant, like he was standing a yard behind his own body, unconnected to himself. He heard Trudy stop in the middle of cleaning a table behind him, and then the thud of her boots as she walked over and slipped onto the stool next to him. “A kindness,” Vulpes repeated quietly, sourly, rhythmically scrubbing his fingers against his palms where his hands rested against his thighs. He could feel Trudy watching and waiting, so close. A wave of claustrophobic discomfort washed over him, knowing he was the focus of attention.

“Don’t look at me,” he muttered reflexively, flinching and shaking his head, turning his face away. “I don’t- it feels-” He squeezed his eyes shut. Beside him, Trudy leaned away a little bit, giving him a little more room.

“A kindness,” Trudy prompted, her voice surprisingly soft.

“A curse,” Vulpes said with a choked laugh, still turned away from her. “My _shadow_. Or maybe I’m the shadow, it doesn’t-” A sharp inhale. “There are too many people here. Too much livestock. And you’re so close to the Divide, and he _knows_ you’re here.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” said Trudy. “Who’s ‘he?’”

“The Courier. And you’ll get no kindness from _him_.” The laugh shook loose, almost a sob. “He’s in the Divide. He’ll run out of food, soon. He’ll need to come out to feed.” Vulpes ducked his head briefly, then finally turned it to Trudy. “I tried to kill him and I couldn’t. He won’t _die_. If you and your people stay here, he will _eat_ you, and nobody will even know. If you want to live, _leave_. Go east. New Vegas, or on to Flagstaff. You’d be safe past the Dam.”

“The Legion’s past the Dam. And we know the Courier, here.” There was a hint of suspicion in Trudy’s voice, underneath the confused worry.

“The Legion- did you listen to what I said? _You don_ _’t know the Courier._ ” Vulpes furiously wiped his palms on his trousers, then clutched his head in his hands, frustrated. “Just go away. Go away.”

Trudy watched him for a few more seconds, eyes darting across his face, lips pursed with concern, but then she got up and returned to her chores, though perhaps she moved a little more slowly, pensive after Vulpes’ “kindness.”

Vulpes laid his head down on the bar, forehead pressed against the warm wood, his elbows jutting forward and his hands sliding back over his neck. He’d tried, and he still felt like shit.

* * *

Some indeterminable time later, Sunny arrived at the bar. The dog was with her; it trotted ahead, its nails clicking with every step. Vulpes heard, stiffened slightly, and forced himself to relax. Trudy and Sunny quietly exchanged a greeting. There was a moment of silence, then- yes. A parting of lips. He’d thought so. The knowledge drifted without meaning through his mind. It didn’t really matter who the profligates preferred to… be familiar with. Not anymore. He didn’t have to like it, but it just didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

There was the sound of a brief conversation. Then he heard Sunny approaching the bar but still didn’t move. There just didn’t seem to be any reason to.

“Hey,” she said, and he heard her sit down on the stool that Trudy had occupied earlier. He couldn’t feel her breath though, or the warmth coming off of her. She had to be facing the bar, respecting his personal space. “…Are you awake?”

Before she could start prodding at him, Vulpes lifted his head enough to fix her with a sharp glare before settling back into the warmth and darkness of his own arms.

“There’s an empty shack on the edge of town you can stay in,” Sunny said slowly, as though choosing her words carefully. “It has a bed, and the plumbing in the bathroom works. There’s still one… one thing, I have to take care of, but then you can move in.”

“No babysitters?” His voice was muffled, but the the grim sarcasm was perfectly audible.

“No,” she replied. “But I want you to promise you aren’t going to hurt yourself.”

Vulpes laughed weakly, just one breathy chuckle.

“ _Words_.” He’d seen the value of _words_. Lucius had sworn his loyalty and servitude to the Legion, and look how quickly he’d forgotten his promises. Words were _nothing_.

“Doc Mitchell thinks we can cobble together a new leg for you tomorrow,” Sunny said then, and that caught his attention. He lifted his head again to search for a lie in her expression, but her face was as open and honest as a child’s.

“I’ll walk,” he said, speaking the words with caution, as though giving them breath might jinx everything.

“According to Doc Mitchell, it might be a few days before you can walk.” She saw the sudden look of betrayal flash across his face, and quickly continued. “It’ll take some adjustments to get the leg fitting right, and you’re going to have to learn how to move on it. You won’t be able to feel it- it’s not going to react like a flesh and blood foot would. You have to figure out how to balance all over again.”

Vulpes settled back down, but he still looked at her with mistrust before averting his gaze.

“Have you eaten?” She asked.

“No, he has not,” Trudy called from another room. “I’ll make you both omelets. See that he eats.”

“Thanks, Trude.”

They sat almost companionably together, unspeaking, while Trudy bustled in and cracked a couple gecko eggs into a pan over a hot plate, her back to them. Eventually, she slipped into conversation with Sunny, meaningless small talk, but it drowned out the silence and lulled Vulpes somewhat. He’d spent his entire life surrounded by people, if not a _part_ of their lives, then at least bearing witness. A silent room was strange to him. The voices were comforting.

A plate of eggs was placed in front of Vulpes, and this time, he at least pushed it around his plate. When one of the women stared too pointedly for too long, he scooped a forkful into his mouth, but it was flavorless, and sat heavy in his stomach.

Sunny finished first, and rose from her seat.

“I have to go borrow some bighorners and take care of something, and then I’ll be back. Watch Cheyenne for me.”

Trudy waved her off. Vulpes rearranged his omelet. He had no appetite.

The eggs were cold and rubbery when Sunny finally returned, dusty to her knees. She exchanged a glance with the barkeep, then smiled wearily at Vulpes.

“All right. The shack’s ready for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know Trudy and Sunny share a house, in game? They gay, you're welcome. (And if you save the woman from the geckos at the spring, she moves in too- poly triad? Who knows!)
> 
> As for poor Vulpes, I'm afraid things will just keep getting worse. Them's the breaks when you're a fugitive war criminal.
> 
> As always, thank you all so much for your comments and kudos, it means the world to me :)


	5. Chapter 5

The shack was larger than Vulpes had expected, complete with kitchenette, bathroom, desk, and a front door that locked. It also came with a huge collection of _junk_ \- random scavenged bits and bobs with no ascertainable value. He ignored those, and as soon as he’d closed the door on Sunny’s polite inquiries (”Do you have everything you need? Does it look all right? Do you-”) he immediately honed in on the block of knives on the kitchen counter. He removed a carving knife from the block, tested its heft in his hand, and smiled grimly. Then he wandered to the bathroom. He pressed the lever on the toilet experimentally. It flushed.

He carefully turned in place on his crutches to face the sink. He barely recognized himself in the cracked mirror of the medicine cabinet. His cheeks were sunken, his face gaunt. He had the rough beginnings of a beard. The bruising around his nose and eyes had faded into a garish motley of yellow and green-brown.

He reached out to the mirror, and swung it open. To his quiet satisfaction, there was a straight razor inside, still sharp. Finally, he could shave.

He only hesitated with blade trembling at his throat for a moment, staring into his own hollow eyes in the mirror. The moment passed; he carefully shaved, toweled off, and limped to his bed with his kitchen knife clutched against the handle of his crutch.

The knife went under his pillow. He laid down on top, and fell asleep within seconds.

He didn’t stay asleep. Noises awoke him in the night.

He didn’t realize what it was, at first, that had pulled him out of sleep and into a mild panic. Then he heard the uneasy low of a bighorner from town, and realized the crickets had fallen silent. Eyes wide in the darkness, he reached under his pillow and grasped the knife, immediately more comfortable with a weapon in hand.

He fumbled for his crutches, and then hobbled to the door of the shack. He gave the knob an experimental turn to be sure it was locked, and then he just stood there, breath shallow, listening.

It might have been his ears playing tricks on him, but he thought he heard something moving around outside the shack, and snuffling at his door. He held his breath and listened harder, but his heartbeat filled his ears. Soon enough, the crickets started up again, and he went back to bed. The crutches were laid down beside the bed again, and the knife was slipped back under his pillow, and though sleep was elusive, he eventually found it again.

* * *

 

“Where is my leg?”

He’d asked before Doc Mitchell could even say ‘good morning.’

“It’s not quite ready yet,” the doctor said, caught off guard and made slightly nervous by the way Vulpes stood slightly lopsided in the door of his shack, peering past him into the desert, and down at the ground, looking for tracks. He’d found pre-war fatigues in a dresser, and wore them with a white undershirt.

“No,” Vulpes said, dragging his attention back to the doctor. “My leg. The one you cut off. Where is it?”

“What? Why?” Doc Mitchell blurted. Then, shaking his head, “We buried it up in the old cemetery on the hill. Couldn’t figure what else to do with that sort of thing.”

“I need it back,” Vulpes said shortly, pushing past the doctor and swinging towards the center of town on his crutches. He’d always had decent upper body strength, and now that he’d recovered somewhat from his ordeal in the Divide, he found he could make fairly good time on the things. The old man trailed behind, a mess of sudden confusion and anxiety that only amplified when he realized his patient was, for some reason, carrying a can of turpentine.

“Why do you- I can’t reattach it, you know!”

“I’m not an idiot,” Vulpes snapped. He continued past the general store. The doctor caught up.

“What do you need your leg for?”

“To burn it.” The thought had struck him as he’d tried to fall asleep the second time. He kept thinking of the snuffling at his door. Knowing that a piece of himself was out there unaccounted for… The idea that the Courier might find it and take it home as a souvenir of his scent, _or worse,_ made his stomach turn.

“Can I ask why?”

“Religious reasons,” he snarled, only half lying. The Legion _did_ burn their dead, and his lost leg certainly wasn’t alive. He passed the saloon. Easy Pete watched from the front porch, and raised a glass of something to them as they headed towards the foot of cemetery hill.

“It’s not going to be… Well, it’s going to be a bit ripe,” Doc Mitchell protested nervously, trying to head him off, but Vulpes deftly moved around him.

“I’ve smelled death before.”

And how strange it was, to know that a real part of himself was dead and rotting in the earth while the rest was still up and moving, going through the motions. The thought made him hesitate for the briefest moment before he adjusted his grip on the can of turpentine, hooked one finger under the handle of his crutch, and began to slog his way up the hill. Doc Mitchell finally gave up trying to stop him and just tagged along in conflicted silence.

He reached the top of the hill, where mismatched grave markers stood crooked in the confines of a weathered fence that was only half standing.  Most of the graves were old and packed down, but one still sat markerless, and only half filled. A faint stench of rot rose from it. Vulpes limped to its side, and looked down at the hole with a frown. Doc Mitchell came to stand at his side.

“This was the Courier’s grave?”

“The hole was already dug,” the old man said with a sheepish cringe and shrug. Vulpes just sighed, unable to begrudge them their economy. He carefully leaned over to set down the turpentine, then crutched to the remaining pile of dirt beside the grave, where the shovel was still standing at attention. He pulled it free one handed.

“Do you-” Doc Mitchell started, but Vulpes waved a dismissive hand at him and returned to the grave. Dropping one of his crutches and leaning heavily on the other, he shoveled some of the freshly moved dirt into the empty side of the grave, and then more- whoever had done the burying had dug that end of the grave deeper. The smell got worse and worse with every spadeful he removed.

He knew he found his leg when the shovel’s blade bounced off something unpleasantly rubbery and a foul stench filled the air. The doctor grimaced and cupped a hand over his nose and mouth. Vulpes grimaced too, head slightly turned, but he had to see. He drove the shovel back into the loose dirt and gingerly squatted above the grave, balancing precariously on his single leg, kneeling on his stump leg.

It was a leg. And it was rotten. Rationally, he knew that mess of gray, slipping skin and slimy swollen muscle had been attached to him only days before, that it was his, but at the same time, how could something so profoundly dead be a part of him? Seeing the leg that had been chopped off wasn’t nearly as unsettling as looking at the stump where it used to be.

He cocked his head, regarding the leg thoughtfully. He might see poetry here, if he were inclined. Something about cutting away the rotten bits so the rest can thrive. Leaving what’s dead behind you, et cetera, ad infinitum. But Vulpes was no romantic. He just wasn’t sure the soppy meat would burn very well. He propped an elbow on his knee and rested his chin in his palm. A few flies found the decaying leg while he thought about it.

Eventually he shrugged, and upturned the turpentine over the leg. It splashed over the bloated flesh, washing away maggots and peeling back entire layers of tissue before soaking into the red earth. Then he took hold of his discarded crutch and struggled back upright, lit a match from the book he’d found in a drawer by the stove, and dropped it in. Flames burst up immediately and filled the air with the unpleasant odor of burning chemicals and death.

If fire didn’t work, he’d find something that would eventually. Maybe somebody in town had an energy weapon he could vaporize it with, or at the very least speed up the process of reducing the limb to a puddle of goo.

There was no point in watching the fire. Vulpes dropped the empty turpentine can into the grave and began to carefully descend down the hill. Doc Mitchell took a moment longer to stare down into the flames before catching up.

“Trudy can whip up some breakfast for you in the saloon, if you still got the stomach for it, after all that,” he said, periodically glancing back up the hill behind them. “Me and Sunny had a go at putting together a prosthetic. I’m gonna’ need some measurements of your leg, and it’ll take a bit of tinkering to get the fit right.”

“Whatever it takes.” Vulpes was scanning the empty streets and surrounding desert for any sign of motion or distortions in the air. He’d thought there was time, but now, after everything, it felt like his only hope would be to run, and run now. “How soon will it be finished?”

“Well, depending on how it goes, we might call it done today, but you’ll still have to learn how to use it. It’ll take more effort than you’re used to, and you’re going to have to learn how to walk without knowing where your foot is.”

“I’ll manage.”

Vulpes turned up to the front door of the saloon, leaning on one crutch and opening the door with his free hand, ignoring Easy Pete’s friendly grin.

It was cool inside, and dim. Mr. New Vegas was talking low and sweet to the women of the Mojave on the tinny radio sitting behind the bar. Trudy was just placing a plate of food in front of a customer; she looked up when the door opened and came to usher him onto a stool at the bar. As she slipped back behind it, she grabbed him by his jaw, turning his face in her hand with a smile. He frowned deeply and pulled away from her touch.

“You shaved. You look good.” Her smile faded slightly as she still squinted at him. “And kind of familiar. Like I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

“Not likely,” he mumbled. Those damned NCR propaganda posters. It had vexed him from the start, thinking of even a rough approximation of his face adhered to every vertical surface this side of the Dam. And that was another source of irritation- who had been close enough to know what he looked like? Who had seen him and sold his name and image to the NCR? Maybe a defector from his Decanus days, or earlier? It _ate_ at him, enough that he’d hunted down the rosters from when he was first assimilated into the Legion- tracking down every other name on the list and tallying the soldiers and corpses until none were left to be suspicious of, which rankled him even more.

Caesar had loved the posters, much to Vulpes' chagrin. Picus had sent rolled copies back to the Fort with his reports as each new design was released. Caesar had threatened to hang them around his personal tents, as a “morale booster.”

He shook the residual bitterness from his thoughts as Trudy put a breakfast mix of eggs and hash in front of him. Though he still had no appetite, he ate, mechanically lifting the fork to his mouth and forcing himself to chew and swallow. He needed to keep his strength up if he was going to out-pace the Courier.

“Ah, Chet! Come to break bread with us simple folk!”

Vulpes listened, but did not look, as a man came into the saloon and swung a leg over a bar stool.

“Come on, Trudy, you know it’s not like that.” Chet seemed to take a faint interest in Vulpes, because he leaned towards him and conspiratorially explained “I’m not as much a goody-two-shoes as a lot of folks in town, and it shows. Easier for everyone if I keep to myself and make the occasional public appearance, hm?” Louder, so Trudy could hear him with her back turned and the radio whining out a tinny version of _Jingle Jangle Jingle_ , “What’s on the menu today, Trude?”

“Only the finest breakfast hash for you,” she replied, turning on her heel and sliding a plate into place in front of him. “Bon appetit.” She pointed an eggy spatula at Vulpes and his empty plate. “You want more?”

He glanced at his plate, then up at the barkeep, and shook his head. He didn’t want to force more food down than he could _keep_ down. Beside him, Chet dug eagerly into his full plate of steaming eggs. Mouth full, he looked over at Vulpes again.

“You’re Doc Mitchell’s patient, I’m guessing. Judging by the gimp leg, anyway.” Vulpes felt his mouth twist briefly downward with kneejerk irritation before he recovered and returned to neutral. Under the bar, he turned his body slightly towards from Chet on reflex, every muscle tense. Chet didn’t seem to notice. “The man who really, really likes maps,” he continued, a hint of derision in his tone. “I’m Chet. I run the store. Best armor and munitions from Primm to Quarry Junction.”

“…Goodsprings is the _only_ thing between Primm and Quarry Junction.”

“Good job, Map Man. That’s exactly my point.” Chet shot him an unfriendly smile.

Vulpes said nothing, just stared at the greasy smears and crumbles of egg white left on his plate.

“Word is, you’ll be on your way soon.” He felt Chet stare at his stump leg again. “I don’t know about that, but I’m no sawbones.” Trudy walked off into another room, muttering to herself, and Chet took the opportunity to lean in again. “They think I look like trouble, and they’re not wrong. I have a nose for it. Got into a lot of trouble when I was younger, but I keep out of it now. _You_ look like trouble, too, though, and I doubt you’ve put it behind you. I don’t think I’m all that comfortable with you here… whoever you are.” Chet was eying him over mistrustfully. Finally, Vulpes turned to face him.

“I’ll be gone before you know it,” he said softly, a cold menace coiled in his words. “And you’ll give me some of that _armor and munitions_ you’re so proud of.”

“Why the fuck would I do that for you?” Chet asked, smiling warily again.

“Because,” Vulpes said, too low for Trudy to overhear from the other room, “I don’t need two legs to kill you.”

Chet was rigid in his seat, suddenly aware of the very dull butter knife held loosely in Vulpes’ fingertips, low at his thigh.

“You say I look like trouble,” the fox growled low, feigning thoughtfulness. “Do you need a demonstration to believe it?”

Seeing the sweat that was beading up on his brow and warmly satisfied with the knowledge he could still intimidate people as a cripple, Vulpes laid the knife back on the bar top, took up his crutches, and slipped out of the saloon into the mid-morning sun.

Easy Pete had gone, and the porch sat empty. A few farmers scratched at the unyielding earth, carefully tending the few tough plants that had pushed through, pulled through. Bighorners grunted and snorted.

He began climbing the hill to the doctor’s house. A knot formed in his stomach.

It was just a house. Rationally, he knew and understood this. Just wood nailed together, and people that moved through it like radroaches, there one moment and gone the next, irrelevant. If the Courier had been here, he left no lasting impression on the old weathered floorboards, on the dusty windows, on the stale air. And yet, his presence had transformed everything forever. In Vulpes’ mind, a voice of panic lurked just under the rationality, screaming.

It was just a house, and it didn’t care who came or went, but now there was a horrible empty smile carved in its wall, and the Courier’s blood was ground into the worn floor with Vulpes’.

A cold nose shoved against his hand, and Vulpes almost fell over from jumping away so fast. His heart clenched painfully in his throat. It was just the dog, and behind it, Sunny Smiles. Today she was in full armor again, with her rifle on her back. Either she was just back from gecko hunting, or she planned on going out later.

“The door won’t open itself,” she said, but he knew it for the empty chiding it was. “Come on, Doc Mitchell almost has the leg ready for you to try on.” She covered the last few yards between Vulpes and the front door, and held it open for him. He hesitated for a very long minute, staring into the blackness inside and willing his heartbeat to slow.

He went inside, moving slowly. Sunny followed, with her dog at her heels.

Doc Mitchell was waiting for him. He was sitting at his desk, making some final adjustments to the prosthetic as Vulpes warily crutched into the room. The kerosene lamp was sitting, unlit, on the open shelving by the doorway, and Vulpes was struck by the sudden urge to smash it into the floor, light the spilled fuel with the matches still in his pocket, and watch the whole house burn.

He blinked, and the thought passed into absurdity. He refocused his attention on the makeshift leg the doctor was holding up for him to see. It wasn’t pretty; a medical brace had been bolted to a stretch of metal tubing, like from a pair of aluminum crutches. The bottom of it bore the same rubber cap as his crutches, too.

“Come, have a seat,” the doctor said, standing up and pushing his chair around the corner from the desk for Vulpes. He sat in it very reluctantly; the cot and the Courier’s empty grin loomed in the corner of his eye. Then, he was distracted by the old man squatting down with creaky knees and reaching for his stump leg, concealed beneath a pant leg that had been twisted and folded back on itself to completely conceal it from the world. “May I?”

Vulpes grimaced, but proffered his leg. The doctor was, at least, very brisk and clinical in his work. He loosened the pant leg, then rolled it up past Vulpes’ knee. His stump shone with puckered surgical scars, and was blotched pink. Mitchell gently probed the tissues, applying pressure, moving from one place to another. Sunny kept watch from the doorway, where she leaned with the dog at her feet.

“You’ve healed up well,” Mitchell said. He reached blindly behind him and took a ball of fabric from his desk. He unballed it, revealing it to be a pair of thick woolen socks. “You’re going to want to pad your leg very well, if you plan on being out and about. Too much time on your feet and you could cause serious tissue damage.”

“If-?” Vulpes questioned as the doctor tugged one sock over his stump, then the other on top of that. “I’m not _sedentary._ You expect me to, what- sit for the rest of my life? Walk only when I need to piss?” All anxiety returned. Was this leg not the permanent solution he’d thought it would be? The doctor had promised he would walk again!

“I can’t stop you,” the doctor admitted, giving a final upwards jerk to the layered socks that was perhaps a little rougher than necessary. “If you want to literally run yourself ragged, there’s nothing I can do about it. But it _is_ my responsibility as your doctor to warn you, and recommend you listen to your body.”

With that, Mitchell pulled Vulpes’ pant leg back down, cuffing it just above the end of his stump, and fastened the prosthetic to his leg. The brace went halfway up his thigh, strapping around his leg every few inches and extending bulky jointed arms to sit alongside his knee. Mitchell tightened them all until he couldn’t fit a finger under them, grabbed Vulpes’ other leg, and lifted it out alongside the stump to compare. Then he fiddled with the crutch portion of his peg-leg, lengthening it by a notch, and retightening the straps.

“Try standing,” he instructed, and Vulpes carefully lifted himself out of his chair. His leg felt _heavy,_ like he was wearing a concrete shoe. The doctor was quick to shove a crutch at him to be safe, and he silently took it, tucking it under his right arm to stand beside the prosthetic. Very slowly, he shifted his weight onto the peg leg, and was alarmed by how unstable it felt. Uneasy, he leaned back onto his flesh and blood foot.

“It’ll take time,” Doc Mitchell said reassuringly. “Now sit down and take that off, there’s a few more changes I see I need to make.”

He sat, and began the process of unstrapping the prosthetic. When it was off, the doctor took it from him, and began making fine adjustments to the bolts that held it all together, to the length of the peg, and various other fiddlings that Vulpes didn’t see the point of.

“It wasn’t painful, or uncomfortable?”

“No.”

“If it ever does bother you, follow the RICE method. Rest, ice, compression, elevation. Well, you can skip the ice, I suppose, it’s not really easy to get outside of Vaults, but the rest holds true. Overuse can tear up your leg, if you aren’t mindful.”

Vulpes listened, but did not acknowledge. He’d experienced pain before. He wasn’t going to let something as small as a sore leg hold him back. Not when he had so much ground still to cover.

“Doc!”

Vulpes jerked in his seat, instinctively reaching for weapons that weren’t there as a small dark haired woman burst through the front door, a much larger man leaning heavily on her shoulder. “Doc,” she gasped again, lifting her sweaty face beseechingly as Sunny helped support the groaning man.

“Lay him down here,” Doc ordered, all business as he pointed to the cot that had been Vulpes’, and the Courier’s before that. Vulpes fumbled clumsily with his crutches before finding his foot and shuffling around the chair, backing against a wall. The small woman hauled the man to the cot with Sunny’s help, dumping him into the worn sheets with a grunt.

“Scorpion,” she gasped, bending double to brace her hands against her knees and catch her breath.

“What kind?” Doc asked, all brusque business as he yanked open a desk drawer and began finger-walking through a box of ampules in a rush.

“Bark scorpion? I-I don’t know for sure, it was small, it all happened fast,” the woman said in a rush, hovering around Doc Mitchell as he pulled a vial from the case and began readying the antivenom. Vulpes tried to vanish in the corner of the room as more people came into the doctor’s house. He heard a brahmin bellow outside. Traders?

“Can you help?” one of the newcomers asked frantically. She was a tall woman, but thin, her skin more freckles than not, and her reddish brown hair pulled back behind a bandanna rolled into a headband. “Please tell me you can-”

“Give him room, Deanna!” another man said softly, holding an arm in front of her, and putting his other hand warmly on her shoulder, his body turned to hers. Vulpes could hear more lingering just outside the open front door.

Too many people. Too many people in too small a space, and too much noise. He pressed his shoulders back against the corner, crushing himself further in, his crutches held defensively in front of him as he breathed through the unrelenting _noise_. Something near the injured man clattered to the floor, and he flinched in spite of himself.

He had to get out.

Keeping his head down, he leaned on his crutches again and hugged the wall to the entry hallway. A burly man with a hunting rifle was standing there. Vulpes hesitated; the guard looked at him dully as he chewed a fat gob of gum. He blew a bubble and drew it back into his mouth with a pop as he raised his eyebrows at Vulpes’ missing leg. Finally, he stepped aside far enough for the fox to pass, squeezing along the side of the narrow hallway and out into the sunlight again, where he was immediately under the scrutiny of another five or so people with the caravan.

“Don’t look at me,” he breathed too quietly for them to hear, deeply uneasy with their attention. As quickly as he dared, he descended the hill, heading back for the relative safety of the shack they were lending him.

Except, there in front of it stood a Securitron. He froze when he saw it, nearly falling. The thing looked severely battered, like someone had done their best to take it out of commission. Its paneling was dented and its paint was scratched. Fluid leaked from a few torn lines in its arms. Nothing but static showed in its cracked monitor as it rolled fractions of inches, forward and back, struggling to maintain balance. He thought he could hear the unpleasant high whine of overtaxed machinery.

He backed carefully away, moving awkwardly on his crutches but uneager to turn his back on the robot. When he was finally far enough away to feel more comfortable, he turned and headed for the saloon instead. He didn’t want to be around the locals, either, though, and when he saw a ladder leaned against the side of the building, he decided instantly to climb it. High ground meant he would be more difficult to see and attack, he would have a good view, and most important of all, it meant solitude so he could gather his thoughts and convince his hands to stop shaking.

It was no easy thing, getting up the ladder. With only one leg, it turned into a test of his upper body strength as he hauled himself up rung by rung. He reached the top though, and then it was easy to crawl on hand and knee across the hot metal roof to sit with leg and a half dangling over the neon sign. From there, he could see the Securitron in the distance, still standing guard in the doorway of the shack, and below the doctor’s house, caravaneers returned to their two pack brahmin.

He suddenly wondered if this was why the sniper had retreated to Novac and spent every waking hour in the mouth of the dinosaur, after he’d killed his wife. To… remove himself from it. Find somewhere where the air didn’t feel so heavy, and where people wouldn’t stare. Couldn’t.

As his gaze wandered to the hills and flats outside of town, so did his mind. Could he make it through Quarry Junction? It would be the most direct route away from the Divide, and it would be nice to have a few deathclaws standing between him and the Courier… but no. He’d seen what night stalkers could do to a deathclaw, even if he could get past them. It seemed like following in Lucius’ footsteps east and turning north to follow the Colorado would be his best bet.

Movement underneath captured his attention, and he peered down between his knees to the ground below. Sunny Smiles was standing there beside Trudy, looking worriedly up at him. They consulted each other quietly for only a second before Sunny was calling up to him.

“I hope you aren’t thinking of jumping,” she said, one hand held to her forehead to block the sun. He blinked at her, confused.

“Why would I jump?” As he asked, the answer dawned on him, and he scoffed and added, “If I jumped from a building this low, I doubt I’d even break bones.”

“Will you come down, at least? For my peace of mind?”

Vulpes glanced out to the doctor’s house, still mobbed by the caravan, and out to the Securitron. He shook his head.

“…No.”

“Then I’m coming up.”

Sunny ran a tender hand behind Trudy’s shoulder, then circled around the saloon, presumably to the ladder. Trudy put her hands on her hips and shook her head at Vulpes.

“You’re being a real pain the ass,” she said. Vulpes stared flatly at her, unmoved. “Like a cat run up a tree!” she added, stabbing a forefinger at him.

There was a series of scrapes and clangs as Sunny reached the top of the ladder and climbed out on to the roof. In a few seconds, she was at Vulpes’ side, lowering herself down foot away and letting her legs hang off the edge of the roof. She unslung the rifle from her back and laid it down beside her on the roof. Trudy shook her head again and went inside.

“So,” Sunny said calmly, in that matter-of-fact tone she had mastered, “what brought you up here?”

Vulpes shrugged, and continued scanning the horizon.

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

“You don’t want to spend time with other people, maybe?”

Vulpes shot her a pointed look, eyebrows raised.

“And do what? Talk about what?” He exhaled, the bitter shadow of a scornful laugh. “There is nothing we have in common.” He looked out towards the desert again, blinking in the sunlight. “It’s better up here. Quiet.”

“Why didn’t you just go back to the shack?”

“There’s a Securitron in the way.”

“Ah, shit,” Sunny said, taking up her rifle and peering down the scope at the shack, to better see the bulky robot standing in front of it. “Victor. God dammit.”

Vulpes blinked at her apparent lack of surprise.

“Victor?”

“Yeah, well- it used to be Victor.” She set her rifle down in her lap. “A Securitron with cowboy programming. He’s been here nearly as long as we have. Except something happened a few months ago, and it’s been all static ever since. The robot just sits there and doesn’t do anything.” She glanced guiltily at Vulpes. “It was Victor’s shack. I thought I trashed him good enough with the Bighorners that he wouldn’t be back, but…”

Vulpes grunted. He was watching a bark scorpion trek across the shallow hills just outside of town. The wind pushed dusty and hot against his cheek. He closed his eyes, leaned slightly into it.

“I’ll… figure something out. With Victor. It must be some residual programming or something, I don’t know. I’ll handle it.” Sunny sighed heavily, and kicked her feet. The lights strung loosely off the overhang of the roof rattled and swayed behind her heels.

Vulpes opened his eyes again when the breeze died. He peered back over his shoulder to the cemetery on the hill. A thin streak of greasy smoke still curled up into the sky. The gecko hunter shifted slightly beside him.

“Can I ask you something?”

He turned his head minutely her way, a voiceless affirmation. Sunny pursed her lips, troubled, and stared intently down at her hands.

“You told Trudy to leave Goodsprings.” She let the statement hang in the air, heavy with confusion, with implication. Vulpes laughed emptily again, shook his head, and stared resolutely out to where he’d last seen the wandering bark scorpion. He couldn’t see it anymore.

“Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

Vulpes turned to face her, sharply meeting her eyes and holding her gaze.

“If I told you,” he said, unblinking, “that… an army. An army is coming to Goodsprings to slaughter every last man, woman, and child. Would you leave?”

Sunny’s eyes darted from his face to his hands, out to the horizon, and back again. Her alarm was outlined in the furrow of her brow, in her open mouthed frown.

“Is there?”

Vulpes irritably waved a hand, dismissive.

“It’s hypothetical. Would you leave.”

“I…” Sunny looked away, uncomfortable. “I would stay with the people. If they left, I’d go with. If they stayed, I’d stay. They need me.”

“Would the people here leave?”

“A few might.” She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Maybe some of the farmers and ranchers. I think most people would follow whatever Trudy and Doc Mitchell did.”

“And would they leave?” Vulpes quietly asked, confident he already knew the answer. Sunny squirmed slightly where she sat.

“…No. Trudy worked too hard to build this town, just to walk away from it. And Doc Mitchell wouldn’t want to leave his home.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.” He said it with finality, resting his case. Sunny wasn’t done, though.

“Please. Tell me.”

Vulpes just shook his head at her, eyes narrowed and mouth open in a muddled display of disgust, disbelief, and frustration.

“I’ve _been_ telling you. I’ve been telling you all this whole time.” He pressed the pads of his fingers against his damp forehead and temple before letting his hand drift out into open air. He could feel the sweat evaporating from his fingertips. “None of you listen.”

The scorpion reappeared from behind a rock just outside the town’s limits. It idly picked its way across the packed earth, stopping often to delicately lift specks of debris off the desert floor to its mouth and taste its environment.

As he watched, the scorpion was suddenly yanked back by its tail, pressed down into the ground, and brutally dismembered, killed by an invisible assailant as though the air itself had come to life.

Vulpes choked on a sharp inhale, staring. This wasn’t a figment of his imagination. He didn’t dare close his eyes, instead tracking a faint shimmer.

“What’s wrong?” Sunny didn’t quite dare put a hand on his shoulder, but she was at attention, ears pricked for trouble as she tried to figure out what he was looking at.

“Shoot it,” he managed to spit out. He lifted a shaking hand to point, accusing, at the slowly moving warp in the air. “There. Shoot it.”

“I don’t see anything,” Sunny said distantly as she squinted out where he pointed. She did pick up her rifle again, though, holding it loosely at the ready. At least she didn’t disbelieve him completely.

The shimmer paused, then turned, venturing up the path into town.

“Shoot it!” Vulpes hissed again, growing frantic. He finally tore his eyes away to glance imploringly at Sunny, who was shaking her head as she still searched.

“There’s nothing- agh!” She barked in surprise when Vulpes rammed a sharp elbow into her side, where her leather armor didn’t quite cover, and yanked the rifle from her hands. Before she could recover, he raised it and fired where he’d last seen the stealthed night stalker. He emptied half a magazine before Sunny flung herself onto him, wrestling for the gun.

“I have to kill it!” He realized he was snarling as he curled around the rifle, desperately trying to hang onto it. He was still weak, though; the woman managed to rip it from his hands after a few unsteady seconds. She hugged it to herself even as she scrambled away from him, further in towards the center of the roof, safely away from the edge.

“There’s nothing out there!” Sunny all but shouted back, breathless. The rifle wasn’t quite aimed at Vulpes, but it wasn’t _not_ aimed at him.

Vulpes deflated. There was no way he could explain the Courier and his night stalkers. He knew how it would sound. A pained grimace of a smile twisted at his mouth for a fraction of a second. The Courier had probably meant for this to happen. Mind games- that was how he operated. Wear his enemies down until there wasn’t a fight, but a massacre.

“Come away from the edge,” Sunny ordered, forcing calm into her voice, the gun still pointed somewhere just left of Vulpes’ hip. “Slowly.” He looked awkwardly away from Sunny, down between his knees. There was about a ten foot drop to the roof of the extended porch in front of the saloon. Without warning her, Vulpes leaned forward and dropped off the edge of the roof.

“No!”

He heard Sunny rushing to the edge of the roof again, but he had already landed almost gracefully on hands and foot on the lower roof, and was shuffling across it toward the side of the building. As the woman poked her head over the roof, he landed foot-first in the dirt of the narrow gap between buildings. He lost his balance and had to catch himself on the splintery wall, but then he hopped the few feet to the ladder and the crutches he’d left there. Above, Sunny was hurrying to the ladder. He could hear her feet slipping on the sheet metal.

Before she could stop him, he shoved the crutches under his arms and began hauling himself as quickly as he could back to his shack. The night stalker was still out there somewhere, and probably not alone. And like an utter fool, he’d initiated hostilities with the locals in an act of fear. Self-loathing roiled in his stomach. He had to to get gear together, he had to get _out_ , before the well he’d poisoned could kill him. He felt Sunny’s eyes on him as he limped on his crutches back down the road and past the caravaneers that lingered with their brahmin. He hesitated for only a few seconds in front of the Securitron that still stood motionless outside before squeezing behind it and through the front door.

He locked it behind him. It was still early, but his exhaustion ran bone deep. He was rattled.

“I need to leave,” he murmured to himself in Latin as moved aimlessly around the shack, lifting items blindly, turning them in his hands, replacing them. “It’s not safe here, I need to leave.”

 _I fucked up_ , his heart stuttered wordlessly as it twisted in his chest. It echoed its sentiment through his body with only waves of dread and shaking, shuddering hands. _I fucked up I fucked up I fucked up I fucked-_

He continued his restless inventory of the shack, acting on years of training to separate the wheat from the chaff as he went, setting aside useful supplies and dumping the rest out of the way. The night stalkers were here. If the Courier didn’t already know where to find Vulpes, he’d find out soon. And besides that, he’d just assaulted a valued member of the community.

He needed to leave. _He needed to leave_.

There was a knock at the door, and Vulpes froze where he stood, an ancient tin of beans in his fist, his heart lodged in his throat. The knock came again.

“Come on,” Sunny’s voice called through the door, “let me in.”

He ignored her, lowering the canned beans to the chipped and dusty laminate countertop as quietly as he could. He peered over one hunched shoulder at the door, jaw clenched tightly enough to make his teeth hurt. Sunny knocked again.

“Look, I’m going to have to tell Trudy what happened,” she said, voice a little lower, more tired. “She heard us moving around on the roof, and a couple of the caravan guards saw us. Everyone heard the gunshots.”

He blinked; he could be wrong, but from her tone, it sounded like she’d just as happily sweep the whole… interaction… under the rug as he would, if there hadn’t been witnesses.

“You’ve been here for a couple weeks and the worst you’ve been is rude,” she confirmed, as though she’d heard his thoughts. “I don’t think you want to hurt anyone here, and I’m not angry or anything. But we need to talk about this. Trudy… won’t like it.”

Vulpes leaned forward over the counter, palms flat on the formica and his crutches jabbing painfully into his armpits. He vacantly realized that his nails were clean; the dark red-brown band of grit that was usually packed into his nail beds had been washed away. He curled his hands into fists, knuckles grinding into the counter.

“Please let me in.” There was a very faint thud against the door. Maybe the heel of her hand, maybe her forehead. Her sigh barely traveled through the wood and made it to his ears. There were a few more unidentifiable noises outside, but then- footsteps. She was leaving.

He upturned a burlap sack of empty tin cans onto the floor, and began shoving his supplies into it.

* * *

 

It was the dead of night, and Vulpes was breaking into Doc Mitchell’s house.

Well, not breaking in. When he tried it, the doorknob turned. Unlocked.

Mentally chiding the doctor for his foolish trust, he crutched through the door as quietly as he could. His foot fell almost silently, but there was nothing he could do about the squeak of the crutches.

It was dark inside, and that was promising. Dark meant that the old man was probably in bed, and nobody would be there to see him as he slowly, slowly crept through the first open doorway into the room the doctor used as his clinic space. It was lit only by what moonlight filtered through the dirty windows. A fire glowed where the visiting caravan had bedded down, but that was well down the hill, and it did nothing to illuminate the clinic. He could hear the soft breath of the scorpion stung patient sleeping in the cot he’d only just vacated.

He didn’t wait for his eyes to adjust. He’d spent enough time in the room that he knew where all the furniture was even when blinded by the darkness. He slowly navigated his way forward, using his crutches to feel the way, operating on the assumption that the prosthetic leg still sat on the doctor’s desk.

His questing hand traced the shelves along the wall, across torn wallpaper, and then found the edge of the desk. He pushed his fingertips over the desktop; he found the kerosene lamp, now cold. Pencils, books.

Yes. His fingers nudged something that rocked on the desk. He lifted his hand to feel it, and recognized the struts of the metal brace, the faint clink of its buckles as he lifted it up. The breathing from the cot caught for a moment, and Vulpes stood perfectly still, like an unseen statue. Then, there was a rustle as the man rolled over, and began snoring wheezily into the pillow.

Gingerly, he took the prosthetic from the desk and blindly buckled it to one of his crutches. He felt around the desk again to be sure he had all the parts, and his hand found the lamp again. He blinked fruitlessly in the darkness and cocked his head as his rough fingertips traced the lamp’s edges.

He still had the matchbook, tucked into one pocket or another.

It would be so easy to smash the lamp, strike a match, and watch the house burn. The picture was so vivid in his mind’s eye- towering whorls of flame erupting from the bone dry wood and licking the night sky. He could see the carved edges of the smiley face blackening, until the whole face had been eaten by the fire.

He gave his head a sharp jerk, banishing the idea, and yanked back his hand as though the lantern glass was red hot.

With one hand he held the prosthetic still so it wouldn’t clang against the crutch as slowly, slowly he retreated, following his own footsteps back along the shelving unit, through the empty doorframe, up the entry hall, out the front door. The night was still calm. He could hear someone in the caravan snoring, the sound echoing across the hard earth. A Bighorner pawed sleepily in its paddock.

Vulpes cut swiftly through the night on his crutches. His next stop was the general store. He could only hope it was unlocked; he didn’t want to be banging on doors at this time of night. He expected trouble from the shopkeeper regardless, but at the very least he was hoping for a quiet entrance-

“Don’t bother,” a voice came quietly from the porch, stopping Vulpes dead in his tracks. There was a rustle of fabric and leather, and Sunny rose from the crate she was using as a chair and stepped into the starlight. “You’re in deep enough shit already without robbing Chet.”

Vulpes hovered uncertainly, ready to bolt, or put up as best a fight as he could.

“At least you have the good sense not to pretend that isn’t what you were planning,” Sunny sighed. “He told everyone he ran into that you threatened him. Coming from Chet, that doesn’t mean much, but.” She shrugged, and held up a bundle wrapped in undyed cotton cloth. “I talked to him and got you some gear. Relax.”

He couldn’t, though. Just when he thought he knew how these townspeople ticked, everything got confusing again. Sunny seemed to be losing her patience; she glanced up the road at nothing, then back to her unwilling ward.

“Come on. Armor up. Doc Mitchell will be sore with me if I don’t see you safely out of town.”

Finally, he edged forward and reached out for the parcel. It was bulky, and heavy; it tugged his arm down several inches when Sunny let it go.

“Put it on, I want to be sure it fits,” she urged him. Harassed, he made his clumsy way to the general store’s porch. He awkwardly held the parcel in one hand, braced the prosthetic with the other, and hobbled as best he could. He laid the package out on the crate Sunny had vacated and unwrapped it. Plain dark armor, not so different from what he was used to. He ran his hands over the textured leather- gecko skin- and looked back at the silhouette of Sunny behind him with no small amount of consternation.

“I don’t understand,” he said quietly, frowning at the ground between them. “Why are you helping me?”

Sunny sighed, and shook her head.

“Because that’s what decent people _do._ ”

Her face was hidden from the starlight by the wide brimmed hat she still wore; his gaze fluttered uneasily over that impenetrable darkness. He felt awkward in a way that was completely alien to him, that he had no way of parsing or identifying.

“If the Legion had come here, I would have killed you,” he said distantly, “or enslaved you.”

“Good thing you're not in the Legion anymore, then,” Sunny replied, a little short. “You get to be someone else now. Lucky you.” Antsy, she strode to the crate and began separating the folded armor. She shoved chest armor into his arms, catching him slightly off guard and almost unbalancing him. “Put this on.”

Piece by piece, he obeyed, sitting on the crate and silently tugging the leathers over his clothes as she handed them to him. In his hands the armor had looked the right size, but on his body, it was a bit loose. He’d lost weight, when he never really had weight to spare. Judging by the furtive frown that caught the silver light as Sunny tilted her head back to look over her work, she agreed. Still, she gave a nod that marked him acceptable, and rummaged in the shadows on the general store’s porch again.

“We don’t really have much in the way of firepower here,” she said, turning back to him with a hunting rifle in her hands, “but this should see you to Primm, at least.” She proffered the gun; Vulpes stared warily at it, trying to find the catch.

“I’ve never been anything but Legion.” There were several faint, hollow pops as he wrung his hands absentmindedly between his knees, cracking one knuckle after the other in a fit of nervous energy. “I don’t know how to be anything else. What do you think will happen when you give me that gun?”

“I don’t know!” Sunny finally cried in exasperation, flinging one hand into the air and making Vulpes flinch back minutely. “I don’t know what you’ll do. But us here in Goodsprings? We did right by you. We saved your life, we fed you, we kept you warm and put a roof over your head, and now we’re sending you back out into the world to do whatever you feel is right because you’re a grown man and you can make your own goddamn decisions!” She scoffed and shook her head, then dropped the rifle onto the crate beside Vulpes and took a few steps away to cool off after her outburst. “Is it so unreasonable to hope that our kindness might have made an impression on you? Jesus Christ…”

With a wary eye fixed on the woman’s back, Vulpes felt sideways for the rifle. His fingers caught the strap, and he slung it over his shoulder before pulling himself back upright and onto his crutches as quietly as he could. When he hesitated, searching for any words that might broach the unnamed ball of alien thought and emotion that had coagulated in his mind, in his throat, Sunny just raised one hand and flicked it. Frustrated. Dismissive.

“Just… go. Just go.”

He closed his mouth with an audible click of teeth, glanced down at his foot, and slunk away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand Vulpes wears out his welcome. But did you really expect any different?
> 
> As always, thank you all again for your continued support. :) Your comments and kudos are extremely encouraging and much appreciated!


	6. Chapter 6

Regret, like a pariah dog, slunk back into Vulpes’ life.

There was _so little_ in his life he truly regretted. There was a lot he was unhappy about, but not much that he felt directly responsible for. This regret, though? It was completely his fault. If he’d only kept his mouth shut and played nice, if he’d only swallowed his pride and his panic and bided his time…

Instead, he crutched across the desert, half his weight on a prosthetic he was struggling to control, the other half on exhausted and trembling arms. He was moving so slowly, he was having trouble keeping his bearings. For a man used to measuring distances by travel times, it was deeply disorienting. Suddenly, the Mojave felt enormous, and he’d never felt smaller.

Pile on top of that the fact that he couldn’t move and fire his gun at the same time. Every time a stray gecko or bloatfly spotted him, he became a sitting duck as he tried to kill it before it could kill him, because there was definitely no way he could outrun them. And what would happen when the Courier or his night stalkers caught his scent in the air? He was a dead man walking.

But still, he pressed southward, knowing that he was on course for Primm, but feeling like he’d somehow wandered into a parallel dimension of endless unidentifiable desert.

Then the sun rose, and it got hot, and everything was even worse.

He found himself sitting in the shadow of a mesquite tree by late morning, sweating like a pig and _regretting_. He still had plenty of food and water, but it was hard to remain confident in his ability when he didn’t even know how much ground he’d covered already. It was painfully obvious now that he’d never outrun the Courier, no matter what direction he went. If he survived this, he’d have to change tactics. Hiding suddenly seemed like the more rational choice. Maybe in New Vegas, if he could ever reach it alive. Maybe he could disappear in the crowds. Even a night stalker would have a hard time navigating streets that were always crowded.

When a shadow appeared on the northern horizon, he initially wrote it off as a trick of the light. Eventually the dark smear in the mirage resolved into a cluster of brahmin and caravan guards. As they got closer, he could make out distinguishing features, and he knew for certain it was the caravan that had stopped in Goodsprings. For a long minute he just stared flatly at them, and then he turned his gaze heavenward, held his hands palm up in the universal sign of “what the fuck,” and let them fall slack to the ground.

“I am going to die out here,” he told himself, shaking his head. Here he was with nearly half a day head start, and he was being outrun by laden pack animals. “ _Dii punivit me._ ”

He didn’t bother getting to his feet as they reached him, passing within twenty yards. He just watched them wryly, and the guards watched him back- at first, on high alert, but he could note the very moment their suspicion turned into perplexity as they noticed his crutches.

“Hey! I recognize you,” a voice called suddenly. Vulpes’ attention snapped to the woman hopping off the small two-wheeled cart hitched behind one of the brahmin, heart leaping with ingrained alarm that he might have been recognized as a Frumentarius, a Legionary. The instinctive fear vanished when he realized that he recognized her, too- the dark haired woman who had brought the wounded man to see Doc Mitchell. She waved on the guards who hesitated when she trotted towards Vulpes, and then she directed her full attention to him, taking full stock of his situation. He tensed under her scrutiny; his skin crawled. He wished she would look anywhere else. “What on earth do you think you’re doing, wandering through the desert in your condition?”

And to his dismay, she actually seemed to expect an answer. She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head forward slightly when he hesitated. As he opened his mouth to tell her it wasn’t her business, though, she shook her head and waved a hand at him. “No, it doesn’t matter, it’s not important. You’re heading to Primm?”

The sudden shift in the course of the conversation threw Vulpes for another loop.

“…Yes?”

The woman smiled broadly; if it wasn’t quite joyful, it was at least satisfied.

“Good! We got room for you on the cart, and we can always use another pair of eyes to watch our six. Come with us.”

“I-”

“I’m not going to leave you to die out here,” she insisted brightly. She jerked her head southward, towards the caravan that had passed them by and was now slowly ambling away. “Come on. Get your shit together and come with me.”

He almost refused, and then that nasty, insidious regret whispered in his ear again. His pride had gotten him in enough hot water. There was no room for it in his life anymore. Shaking his head to banish the last of his egotism, he pulled himself to his feet and began the slow speed chase after the caravan, the woman walking at his side.

“Name’s Sal,” she said, shoving her hands into her jeans pockets and smiling up at him again. “This is my caravan. Say,” she remarked suddenly, taking stock of his prosthetic as he hobbled along, “that’s a nice peg leg you got there. I know a few guys up at McCarran would love one of those bad boys. Is that Doc Mitchell’s work?”

Vulpes cast a dark look her way, and was almost annoyed by how earnest she seemed.

“My leg?” he growled, “Or its… replacement? He’s responsible for both.” His inflection made it clear exactly how happy he was with his prosthesis. Its straps dug painfully into his leg, blood was seeping from _somewhere_ and pooling around his stump, everything hurt, and nothing moved the way it was supposed to.

“I meant the prosthetic,” Sal clarified with a frown, “but I can see now that’s a touchy subject. Don’t worry about it, I’m sorry I asked.” And she _was_ sorry. How obnoxious. Had the dissolute always been this cheerfully naive? He had pacified tribes and had dealings on the Strip, but he only remembered them as rightfully paranoid and suspicious of strangers. Maybe it was different, outside of faction lines. Or maybe Goodsprings was a fluke, and this woman’s indifference was due to the civility traders were traditionally met with. “We’re headed west to the Mojave Outpost after Primm if-”

“No,” Vulpes said quickly, cutting her off. An uncomfortable beat, and then, “thank you.”

They caught up with the cart, and Vulpes flung himself awkwardly into it at Sal’s silent urging. The scorpion sting patient was already sitting there, and he gave Vulpes a curt nod of greeting before returning his attention to the wastes. Even injured, a rifle sat in his lap.

Vulpes hissed as he steadied and repositioned himself, letting his legs dangle off the back of the cart in case he had to make a quick getaway, as if it were something he was even capable of. He probed cautiously at the straps wrapped painfully tight around his leg; he winced as his fingertips pressed them deeper into the wounds they’d worn in his skin. Blood was coming up through his pants in thin stripes and splotches under the leather of his armor.

If nothing else, he was glad that his companion in the cart was as disinclined to chat as he was. There was periodic murmur of conversation between guards around them, but the cart was a near-comfortable bubble of introspection. Nobody spoke to Vulpes. He didn’t speak to anybody. This lasted all the way to Primm.

He knew, of course, that Lucius wouldn’t be there. He didn’t expect to run into him, or any of of the men trailing in his wake. They would be well on their way east by now. That didn’t stop his heart from stuttering anxiously as the peak and turn of the roller coaster and the tops of Primm’s tallest buildings emerged from the haze.

It didn’t ease up, either, as they pulled up through the abandoned NCR encampment, now just scattered trash and strategically arranged barriers. Every muscle was tense as the cart bounced over the broken pavement through empty streets. Before they reached the casino, Vulpes prudently levered himself off the cart, stumbling only a little before he caught himself on his crutches. A glance back, and he saw Sal shooting him a half smile and a flippant salute over her shoulder, and then he was alone in the dusty street and the cart was just a vanishing rumble behind him.

There were signs of Lucius’ passage, here, even now. Dropped scraps of Legion armor and sun-bleached red fabric collected in the gutter. Empty cans, broken bottles. Human shit. All the waste left behind when a lawless people moved.

He stood alone in the street, poking at a heap of refuse with a crutch, and he felt empty. A stale wind blew rustling paper by. Distantly, he heard the open and close of a door, a jangling bell, and vague noises of cheerful conversation. He began walking the opposite direction, back up the street, inexplicably weary.

His reunion with Lucius notwithstanding, he’d never set foot inside Primm’s perimeters before. He had been too high profile to be making appearances in smaller settlements by the time they had pushed this far west. He wasn’t sure where he was going. He wasn’t sure he _should_ be going. But now he was here, in the wake of the Legion’s remains, he found he wanted nothing more than to leave.

A massive neon sign caught his eye, though, as it flickered and hummed in his peripheral vision. He turned his head enough to look, and turned more to stare head on.

The Mojave Express. Here.

A shudder ran down his spine. The sign flickered again as if in sympathy; the “O” blacked out for a few seconds before stuttering back to life.

Cautious, he took a limping step toward the building. When it didn’t leap forward and bite him, he took another step, and another. The building remained completely stationary and unoffensive.

The Courier had, by all reports, come to New Vegas from Goodsprings by way of Primm. Once again, Vulpes was uncomfortably certain that he was following in the Courier’s footsteps, like a shadow running a few years late. He drew up under the building’s eaves; he brushed fingers against the dusty glass of the front windows. They were papered over inside.

Still hesitant, he crept to the door. His hand rested on the doorknob for a full second before he went in.

Light filtered softly through the faded paper on the windows. An oil lamp glowed on the long counter dividing the room. Spare mechanical parts littered every flat surface. There was a wall of pigeonholes behind the counter, and in the dim he could just barely make out a carefully sorted collection of nuts, bolts, washers, screws… A frown surfaced on Vulpes face as he moved into the silent room, looking over every tangle of wire and scrap of sheet metal. It was quiet and calm, as though he’d stepped into some static half-world where time didn’t work quite the same. Nothing moved here except the dust motes in the air. It felt like if he reached out to touch a piece of scrap or a sheet of paper, he would find it was all attached- one enormously complex object cleverly disguised as a room, impervious to time and influence.

“Can I help you?”

The air was so heavy, and the room was so muffled and still, Vulpes didn’t startle when the old man bustled into the front room. His attention was slow to shift from the wrecked eyebot on the counter to the proprietor of the Mojave Express. He could only stare; he wasn’t sure why he’d come inside, except that he knew in his heart that the Courier had done it before him and it would have felt wrong to go against the script fate had laid out when it had dumped him right at the door. The old man seemed unbothered by his reticence; he smiled faintly and began idly organizing a patch of countertop.

“My name’s Johnson Nash; I run the Mojave Express. I also sell equipment and scrap, if that’s more your speed.” Nash’s eyes dipped shamelessly to Vulpes’ crutches and prosthetic leg. “Were you needing spare parts? Or did you want a message sent? I’m sorry to say that I’m short on couriers at the moment, so I’m not sure how soon we could get your mail delivered.”

“…No,” Vulpes finally croaked. He cleared his throat. “Short on couriers?”

Nash smiled wryly.

“After _the_ Courier made a name for himself, so to speak, interest in the profession dropped off. Between that and the battle at the dam, with all the rogue types wandering around, business isn’t exactly booming. I haven’t had a courier through in weeks, and it’s starting to pile up.” He gestured at a few stacks of envelopes and a couple roughly wrapped parcels. “If it weren’t for all the military traffic and my scrap business, I’d have to close up shop.”

Vulpes prudently broke eye contact, turning to look at the eyebot again.

“The Courier… he was one of yours.”

“…He was,” Nash confirmed, slightly uneasy. “But not anymore. I don’t endorse the kind of things he’s accused of, and I haven’t seen him in over a year.”

“When?” Vulpes asked distantly, blinking back to Nash again. “When was he… How long?”

“Is this an interrogation?” Nash asked suddenly, frowning heavily. One of his hands, Vulpes noticed, had vanished below the counter. “Who are you with? The NCR?

“No,” Vulpes protested hoarsely, but he instantly fell silent again as he searched for some explanation that Nash would believe without also giving him reason to shoot him. But Nash was peering intently into his face and the tense hunch of his shoulders, still frowning, and both hands slowly returned to the counter.

“No,” he echoed. “You _knew_ him, didn’t you.”

“Yes. Yes.”

There was a lull as Vulpes looked anywhere but at Nash, and Nash wound down, fidgeting with a stack of delivery receipts.

“I guess I can understand that sort of… morbid curiosity, when it comes to the Courier. Goodness knows I’ve lost sleep trying to figure out if there was something I could have done to prevent it all. Rumor has it it was one of my packages that started everything… Weighs heavy on the soul.”  The old man sighed. “It wasn’t supposed to be him carrying that package, you know. It was another fellow. Distinctive man, very serious, with a real air about him. Carried an old flag pole, for whatever reason, the kind with the eagle on top. It’s the damnedest thing, but if I had to pick which one I thought was more capable of this kind of evil, I would have guessed him, not the Courier. I should have known something was fishy about it all when he insisted the Courier take the job instead of him. Like he knew it was trouble. Haven’t seen _him_ since then, either.”

Vulpes stared down at a random point on the floor; he picked anxiously at some peeling tape on his crutch. It had to be the platinum chip, and the other courier… it sounded like Ulysses. The story was beginning to knit together. The Courier had blown up Ashton, and Ulysses developed some sort of strange vendetta. They were both slated to carry a package for House, but Ulysses knew the chip would bring danger with it, and let the Courier have it. And only a few days later, danger caught up. He cocked his head slightly at the thought.

“You knew the Courier before he was shot in the head.”

“Shot in the head?” Nash’s eyebrows raised dramatically, drawing deep lines in his forehead. “That might explain some of his recent strangeness, then. When I knew him, he was quiet, a real nobody. A little weird, to be honest. Kept to himself and read his books. Real books, old prewar ones. He always seemed more interested in them than anything or anyone around him. I never even knew his name,” Nash admitted with a sheepish shrug. “Most folks getting into this line of work are looking to put some distance between themselves and their pasts, and the men appreciate the discretion... I only saw him once after I gave him that job, as he passed through on his way to the city, but it was a short talk. I didn’t know he was shot.”

“I see.” Vulpes stood there for another uncertain second, but the dreamy haze was lifting, leaving him feeling uncertain and vulnerable with too much information to process. He nodded in Nash’s general direction, and moved unsteadily to the door.

“Say-” Vulpes paused, and looked back over his shoulder. “Are you headed to New Vegas?” The old man was leaning conspiratorially over the counter. There was a sudden gleam in his eye. “I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t desperate, but…”

And that was how Vulpes found himself limping westward in the wake of Lucius’ exiles with a sack of city-bound mail emblazoned with the Mojave Express logo on his back and a look of dazed consternation on his face.

Nash had needed a courier, and Vulpes had needed the caps, and now he was really walking in the Courier’s shoes.

* * *

A long road. A lonesome road. It was odd; the roads seemed so different now. It was the same cracked pavement and the same faded signs, but the feeling had changed.

He numbly pondered it as he limped along on his crutches, his prosthetic tied to his back alongside his pack and mail bag. The sensation that the desert had somehow grown when he had been in the Divide remained, but it was more than that. He was more familiar with this stretch of highway than that between Primm and Goodsprings. He’d been along this way a few times. But it didn’t look the same, though nothing had changed. Everything was too sharp. Everything was too dull.

He frowned as he considered that it might just be him who had changed, and not the landscape.

But still… had it always been this quiet? Certainly not when he traveled with a scouting party, but when he was alone? He was sure there had been the faint buzz of insect life, broken up by the odd yip or squawk of a larger creature. But the silence? Was this silence the same?

He paused, and slipped the rifle off his shoulder. For half a minute he stood propped there, crutches jammed painfully in his armpits, rifle half-raised as he slowly, slowly let his eyes drift over dirt and scrub. With every passing second, his doubt grew. His hands shook. Had they ever stopped shaking?  The muzzle of the rifle bounced and jittered in the air, amplifying his frustrations until he snarled and let it drop on its strap.

Something huffed a distance away, startled, and there was a blur and puff of dust as it retreated. Sucking in a breath, Vulpes clawed at his rifle again, raised it, and squeezed off three shots. They slammed into the dirt, kicking up sprays of grit. The blur was gone, if it ever was there.

Had there even been a noise?

Vulpes lowered the rifle again, breathing shallowly, jaggedly. Unfamiliar emotions twisted at his face until he forced them down.

The desert was silent again, his gunshots faded. He kept moving.

* * *

The quiet made him uneasy. He decided this as he pressed himself more closely into the contours of a boulder, as far out of the cold night air as he could get. It wasn’t that he- it was just, when it got so quiet, it gave the impression that a predator was watching. That wasn’t paranoia, it was perfectly reasonable _instinct_. Live long enough in the wastes and you can feel the eyes on you. Geckos, deathclaws, coyotes, night stalkers- the body learns and the body knows. Instinct. Not paranoia. Not fear.

Yes. No. Yes.

He growled wordlessly and bumped his head back into the rock, then again.

It was simpler in the Legion. Orders from above, resources from below. No questions- you just take what you’re given and do as you’re told. His men were rarely as skilled or as disciplined as he liked, but they were loyal, and Caesar… Caesar confused him, _confounded_ him, but he had been so successful in uniting the tribes and ending their woes. For all its ugliness, Vulpes had been… content. His world had been balanced.

Not like this. No orders, and no resources, and nothing to fill the gaps except the bone deep weariness of a fear-born adrenaline rush.

He missed the Legion, he conceded as he closed his eyes. He missed the comfort of structure. And he missed Caesar.

* * *

_The first time he met Caesar, his hands were bound behind his back and twisted painfully up between his shoulder blades by a masked veteran decanus._

_He had just won a battle for the Legion. He had saved the lives of countless legionaries. He had disobeyed direct orders to do so._

_So here he stood, lost in his own bewilderment at his situation. Behind him, Centurion Regus, the rock. Before him, Lord Caesar himself, the hard place. And all around them, high ranking men looked on, caught between boredom and vague interest. Praetorians, Decani, Frumentarii. Lucius, still young and vital, standing guard behind his king and ward. The Malpais Legate, still further back, his arms crossed over his chest as he coolly looked on. Two Praetorian guards with bull whips, to one side, wearing stormchaser wraps and goggles for anonymity._

_He dropped to his knees and bowed his head at the feet of his god-king before the decanus could push him down._

_“I was expecting a tribal chieftain,” Caesar drawled in English, “but you seem to have brought me your own decanus. You do know the difference, right?”_

_Vulpes blinked, and his eyebrows knitted together. He hadn_ _’t expected… well, he’d thought Caesar would be different than this. He wasn’t sure how to interpret this blase sarcasm._

_“My Lord, we’ve captured the chieftain. He’s being held alone under watch in the slave quarters. I’ve brought Decanus Vulpes Inculta here for your judgment.” He all but spat at Vulpes’ rank, clearly voicing his opinion that it was undeserved without actually saying so._

_There was a pregnant pause. At the time, Vulpes was intent on keeping his head down; all he saw were Caesar_ _’s feet, dusty and motionless. In retrospect, he could imagine exactly the disdainful, doubtful sneer Caesar would have been turning on the Centurion in that moment._

_“Sir,” the Centurion tried again, an edge of worry in his voice now that he realized this wasn’t going well, “This legionary disobeyed the direct orders of a superior officer, a centurion, in the middle of battle! This sort of insubordination is what undermines entire nations! I ask that he be crucified as an example to any other_ free thinkers _that crop up and think they can improvise and get us all killed!_ _”_

_“He doesn’t seem to have gotten you all killed,” Caesar remarked, with an air that suggested mild, mocking disappointment in the fact. In the upper peripheral of his vision, Vulpes saw Caesar beckon to someone on the sidelines, his hand low at his side, casual._

_“Not this time, perhaps, sir, but how soon until he does?”_

_Footsteps, and a legionary walked up to Caesar_ _’s side and handed him a report written hastily on foxed paper._

_“This report says that it was the Decanus’ contubernium that captured the chieftain and won the battle for us.” There was a rustle of paper as Caesar shook the report in his hand, snapping it flat to read it more easily. “It would take a lot of fucking up for him to get more legionaries killed than he just saved. Looks like he’s starting with a negative balance. Are you suggesting we crucify him now, Centurion, or that we let him massacre a few contubernii first to balance the accounts?” There it was again- a casual dark humor that Vulpes didn’t quite understand. It felt foreign. The Centurion remained notably quiet._

_“The question then, is- do we punish him for turning the tide of battle and bringing me a victory, or reward him for disobeying direct orders?” The silence was heavy, and all the heavier for the multitude contributing to it. The camp thrummed with sandals scuffing in the dirt, leather and fabric brushing together, the odd cough or cleared throat. No one so much as whispered while the Centurion still grasped for words. Vulpes blinked dumbly at the ground, still flabbergasted to even be in this position, and not quite capable of parsing its surreality. When he’d disobeyed orders, he hadn’t really thought about what might happen afterward. In truth, he’d half expected he wouldn’t survive his attempt to capture the chieftain. All of this, everything that had happened since, played out like a surreal fever dream._

_“Insubordination is a serious crime, my lord!” Regus finally sputtered._

_“In this army, so is incompetence,” Caesar shot back quickly, and Regus immediately shut up. There was another brief pause. Vulpes could feel the sweat running down the back of his bared neck. “What do you think, Decanus? Do you deserve to be crucified?”_

_“If you see fit, my lord,” Vulpes said stiffly and quietly in Latin, after the briefest pause when he was scrambling to find his voice. Caesar hummed, as though intrigued._

_“You understand the severity of your crime?” This in English._

_“Yes.” Latin._

_“You knew it was a crime when you went against orders on the battlefield?” English again, and Vulpes’s eyes darted aimlessly as his abstract worry began to deepen. Was this some sort of test? The constant English? What was the right answer? Was this trial even real? Was this even really Caesar? No, it had to be Caesar, he wasn’t important enough for such an elaborate lie, but why? What did they want from him? Time seemed to slow as his mind raced ever faster. His body felt like a puppet loosely tethered at the ends of mile long strings, and he was viewing its world through pinholes._

_“…Yes,” he answered in Latin, only seconds later, though it felt like years._

_“But you’re okay with being executed for it.” Vulpes was yanked a little nearer to his body as he focused on the sentiment rather than the language. A stab of very real fear through his chest honed his senses. The pinholes widened, and he became acutely aware of every tiny movement and noise around him._

_“I do not wish to die, my lord, but if you command it, I accept it as fair punishment.” It had hurt to speak that aloud, though he meant every word. His body felt heavy; the puppet’s strings, cut._

_“Then why did you disobey the Centurion, Decanus?”_

_“There was an opening. I would have missed the opportunity if I had sent a runner for new orders.” Vulpes paused to gather his thoughts. He had always been quick at thinking on his feet, but explaining in detail why or how he did what he did after the fact was harder. “The numbers. Made sense. If I obeyed orders, we all would have died. If I disobeyed, many might not. I… did not wish to die, my lord. I didn’t want my men to die, when I could prevent it. It would have been… an unacceptable waste. The knife was at my back,” he said on rote, “so I stepped forward.”_

_“The calculus of war,” Caesar said lightly. Vulpes carefully kept his face neutral and downturned. He didn’t know what calculus was. “And here we are.”_

_“As you say, my lord.”_

_“Stand up, Decanus.”_

_The hairs on his neck stood on end as Vulpes eased onto numb feet. His heart drummed light and quick like a sparrow against his breastbone._

_“Now look at me.”_

_This was even harder. After a moment_ _’s hesitation, Vulpes lifted his gaze to meet Caesar’s. The god-king was smiling coldly at him. It cut right into the core of his dread. He was aware of the Veteran Decanus’ hand hovering over his shoulder again. Had his anxiety shown?_

_“I’m beginning to think the battlefield isn’t the right place for you,” Caesar said, cupping the elbow of the opposite arm in one hand, and pensively holding his chin between forefinger and thumb with the other. “And you’d be wasted on a cross.” A dark glance past Vulpes, to Centurion Regus. “There are better examples to make than the execution of the man who saved an entire century of legionaries. But,” he added, those glittering dark eyes flitting gleefully back to Vulpes, “you did disobey a Centurion’s orders.”_

_Still smiling, Caesar turned away from Vulpes and began ambling back towards his tent._

_“Whip him bloody,” he called calmly to the two waiting lictors, who stood a little more straightly and worked the leather of their whips in their hands. “If he survives, send him to me. I have work for him.”_

* * *

He rose before the sun, and managed to kill a radroach for breakfast out of sheer luck. He’d trapped it in a corner, and bludgeoned it with a crutch. The meat in its legs and thorax was spongy and tender, steamed in the exoskeleton over a small fire, but the flavor, as always, was little better than dirt.

Within the hour, he was clutching his violently cramping stomach as he staggered along. The damn bug had probably eaten something poisonous. That, or he’d gotten too much radiation. No headache or sunburn, so probably the former.

What a waste of water, he thought as he pushed a finger down his throat and emptied his stomach on the tarmac. He wiped the drool from his chin and tossed the few roach legs he’d saved into the scrub, where it could poison some other witless animal.He fumbled in his pack for a lump of charcoal from his old fire, crushed it under his boot, and swallowed as much of the greasy residue as he could pinch off the ground. Someone had told him at some point that charcoal absorbed poisons. He never knew if it was true, but he’d been doing this for decades, and he wasn’t dead yet.

Later in the day, he paused to crouch down in the dirt again, swaying unsteadily and breathing hard as he stared at a warp in the air, ten or fifteen yards ahead. He didn’t raise his gun this time, just watched. He had limited ammo, and after last time…

His hands were just too shaky. That was all. Better to wait for a clear shot than to waste bullets on maybes.

He stared for a long while, blinking in the sunlight, and only gave up when he lost track of where he thought the shimmer started and stopped.

Probably just the food poisoning. Making him see things. And who knows what the charcoal he’d eaten could have been contaminated with.

For dinner he picked scorpions from under rocks. He caught their tails in his trembling hands, only taking one or two stings of weak venom before he’d gathered and killed enough to feed himself.

Hungry as he was, he picked them apart with his fingers where he caught them and ate them raw, shame bubbling in the back of his mind. A year ago- a _month_ ago- and he’d have been able to hunt down _real_ prey, and eat like a true Legionary. This was… subsistence. He hadn’t had to to this since he was a child, trapped in tribe more worried about the logistics of their next bluetooth drug cascade than acquisition of food.

He twisted the tail off another scorpion, and turned and bent it anxiously in hands puffy from the stings.

He still had a gun. He still had all his experience and skill, he still knew the desert. His stump leg slowed him down, but to say it was responsible for how far he’d fallen felt… dismissive.

“Can’t afford pride, anymore,” he reminded himself, and he tossed the tail away to pick at the curled mass of pincers and legs left behind.

* * *

_“What do you do for fun, Vulpes?”_

_“…my Lord?” Vulpes stared blankly at Caesar. Caesar was sitting low on his throne, legs splayed and body slightly angled so he slouched over one arm._

_“What do you do for fun?” Caesar raised his bushy eyebrows, and tilted his head back to blindly gesture at Lucius, who lurked in the tent behind and pretended not to eavesdrop. “Lucius here enjoys wrestling tournaments. Lanius keeps a whole tent of slave women on rotation, and he’s an avid chess player- he taught some of the women to play, I hear. Beats them if they beat him.” He winked. “Even Drusus, out front guarding my tent- he writes poetry. I like to know what makes my men tick. So what do you like to do in your spare time?”_

_Vulpes blinked at him, unspeaking. Eventually, a frown ghosted across his lips, and he glanced at the ground before meeting his king_ _’s eyes again._

_“If you’ll permit me, my lord-”_

_“I fucking asked you, Vulpes, you’re permitted.”_

_“-I don’t have spare time. And I don’t have fun.”_

_“You have no spare time,” Caesar repeated, doubt evident._

_“It’s my job to watch, Lord Caesar,” Vulpes replied, facing forward again. “So I am always watching.”_

_“And you don’t do anything just for the satisfaction of it.”_

_“I find a good deal of satisfaction in my work, my lord.”_

_“So what about before you were a Frumentarius?” Caesar asked, trying a different approach. “When you were a Decanus, or before then. You’ve spent the past few years on the front, right? The shock troops tend to enjoy sport.”_

_Vulpes shrugged slightly. He didn_ _’t understand why Caesar was so interested. It was disconcerting, when he made a point of keeping his head down._

_“I never quite saw the appeal.” He remembered how vicious some of the competitions could get. He could just about appreciate the wrestling matches, even when they ended in horrifically broken bones. It was when the vanguard lined up slaves with empty bottles dangling from fingertips at arm’s length and declared competitions of skill, with gun, or with spear, that the appreciation soured. Degenerate slave or not, he didn’t derive pleasure from watching women be riddled by poorly aimed bullets, especially to a chorus of jeering laughter._

_Sacrificing life for a greater good was one thing. Meaningless death to entertain bloodthirsty men for an hour or two was another. It felt_ _… wasteful._

_And besides that, it reminded him too strongly of Sissy. Of how she and all the others had been lined up, and how the Legate_ _… He blinked the memory away._

_He_ _’d never forbidden his men from participating, but to his knowledge, none of them ever had. True, they fit in just about as well as he had- his second in command, Gaius, was almost embarrassingly softhearted and so deliberately subservient that Vulpes couldn’t be sure if he was infatuated with him or simply felt indebted, two more were joined at the hip and very obviously engaged in… unsavory relations, even if he’d never caught them, and the rest were a hodge podge of personality and quirk that had been crushed in other troops. He’d spent his time hammering tactics into his men rather than trying to pry their individuality out. Maybe he’d been too soft on them, or too hard. He didn’t know; his contubernium of black sheep was often sent on solo operations, and were somewhat secluded from other units, so there was little chance to compare_ modi operandi _. Maybe it didn_ _’t matter. Few of his men had ever fallen in battle. Surely the results excused questionable methodology._

_He twitched at the sound of a cleared throat. Caesar still expected an answer._

_“I mostly watched the legionaries. Learning their strengths, their weaknesses. Better to know ahead of time than to learn on the battlefield.” He glanced sidelong at Caesar again. “I’m good at watching, my lord. It_ is _why you made it my job._ _”_

_Caesar continued to watch him as he stood at ease, motionless in his position at his side._

_“You’re kind of a creepy one, Vulpes, you know that?”_

_“It is also my job to creep,” he said placidly, the humor so dry that it practically dissolved into dust._

_“Mission successful,” Caesar breathed, shaking his head and looking away._

* * *

Sometimes he wore the prosthetic leg. Sometimes he didn’t. Walking was slow and clumsy either way.

It rankled him to admit, after falling for the umpteenth time, that the old man had been right when he’d said it would take training and time to get used to it. The damn thing was heavy, the straps cut into his thigh, and he never knew where his peg of a “foot” was. The only benefit of wearing it was that he could still creep along with his rifle at the ready, compared to his abject uselessness while he was on crutches.

Not that he generally needed the gun. The roads were unusually clear of wildlife and raiders, probably thanks to the combination of the increased military traffic and the passage of Lucius’ band of deserters. He still found their trash here and there, where it collected against the spines of cacti and in the crevices of the craggy earth.

They’d have reached the canyon already. He hadn’t even spotted the burnt out shell of Nipton yet.

He stopped to lean back against a boulder and take off the leg. He loosened the straps with a hiss of pain, and picked the fabric of his under armor away from the bloody indents left behind.

It was getting easier, that much was true. The more time he spent using it, the more familiar he grew with it. But was it really worth it? What was the payoff, exactly? He scowled as he mulled this over, looping the prosthesis’ straps around the strap of his pack and tightening them with a sharp jerk.

Maybe the ability to walk and carry a gun at the same time was enough to make it worth it. He was carefully not looking at a patch of mirage a ways behind him. He couldn’t be sure about it, and nothing had happened yet, but… well, the prosthetic was becoming a painful distraction, and if something _was_ following him, taking it off might lull it into carelessness.

He shoved off the boulder with a crutch tucked under each arm, glancing only briefly back. The whole ground shimmered with heat.

A shallow exhale, and he watched the ground as he walked, all the while trying to make out the sound of footsteps past the frantic beat of his own heart.

* * *

_“Have you ever heard of the trolley problem?”_

_They were gathering their things after a strategy counsel. Lanius had left at the first opportunity, and Lucius was sitting back in Caesar_ _’s quarters picking at a lump of meat on a spit, but Vulpes was still gathering up and organizing a couple dozen reports his spy network had sent him. He looked up from the mismatched, wrinkled heap of paper in his hands to Caesar, who was standing on the other side of the table, watching him shrewdly._

_“No, my lord.” He began painstakingly organizing the notes by the date they were written._

_“Do you know what a trolley is?”_

_“Like the monorail,” Vulpes hazarded. “A car that moves on a set course.”_

_“The trolley problem goes like this,” Caesar went on, still watching his Frumentarius. Vulpes was uncomfortable under his gaze; he trusted Caesar with his life, but he didn’t like being the subject of his scrutiny. Every cell in his body squirmed. “A trolley is moving down a track towards five people who were tied up and placed on the rails. If it hits them, they’ll all die. But there’s also a fork to another track with only one person tied up on the rails. If you divert the trolley, you’ll save the five on the main track, but kill the person on the second track. What would you do?”_

_Vulpes glanced briefly up at Caesar, then fixed his eyes on his work. He carefully rolled the notes into a tight tube, and tied a length of twine around its center as he mulled over the problem Caesar has posed to him._

_“…are they Legionaries?” Vulpes asked. “Or dissolute?”_

_“They’re just people,” Caesar said, mildly exasperated. “You don’t know.”_

_“Are there people in the trolley?”_

_“Vulpes- the trolley doesn’t matter. What would you do about the people on the tracks?”_

_“I would do nothing.” He knotted the twine, looked to Caesar, and saluted. Before he could turn to leave, however, Caesar held up a hand, stopping him instantly._

_“Not so fast. Why wouldn’t you do anything?”_

_“If they aren’t with the Legion, then they’re better off dead, and without orders or intel, it’s not my business,” was his simple reply._

_“And yet, here you are as a Frumentarius because you disobeyed direct orders,” Caesar pointed out. Vulpes met his eyes, face blank._

_“When the knife is at your back, you step forward.” He saluted again. “My lord.”_

_Caesar watched, perplexed, as his Frumentarius Summus slipped out of the tent._

* * *

A few days along, he glimpsed people in the distance. It was impossible to tell if they’d seen him too, but they were headed his way, and he would never outrun them.

Friend or foe, his scout brain asked, but the question was moot. The Legion was dead, its remnants turned against him, and everyone left in the Mojave was either NCR or hated the Legion on principle. He had no friends, here.

No friends, and he made an easy target. He felt foolish, though he knew there was no other course of action he could have taken. What else was there? Staying in Goodsprings forever?

He swore under his breath and lurched off the road, dropping down to a crouch amidst the scrub and rocks to make himself a less obvious target. If he still had his leg, he wouldn’t even be on the main road. He watched as the group of men moved closer. They were wearing NCR fatigues. Slowly, he swung the rifle around on its strap, into his hands.

He heard one of the men shouting, then two, and he raised the rifle, breathing shallowly. They’d spotted him.

“Easy! We’re just passing through!”

The man in the lead raised his empty hands, still over fifty feet away. Wary, Vulpes lowered his rifle an inch, just enough to look over the scope. There were eight soldiers, all armed. As they came closer, he discerned six men, two women. He held his ground, and lifted the rifle again when they came within thirty feet.

“Steady now!” the leader urged, his hands still raised. He turned back for only a second, saying something to his men, before breaking away from the group to approach on his own. “We don’t want any trouble, not any more than you do.”

He was roughly Vulpes’ age, with a dark complexion and closely cropped hair. He had more than a touch of gray at his temples. Vulpes glanced behind him to the rest of the soldiers. All of them looked young, maybe mid to late twenties. He looked to the man before him again. Commanding officer, had to be.

“Me and my men are headed back to California,” the officer tried again. Vulpes could feel the man taking stock of Vulpes’ weapons, crutches, stump. His eyebrow twitched minutely, but he otherwise retained his pokerface. If he weren’t a spy, Vulpes might not have even noticed the once over.

Skillful. Almost impressive. Not quite.

Vulpes pulled his crutches under him and stood, but kept his rifle in hand.

“You came from the west, right?” the officer asked, hands briefly resting at his waist. “What are the roads like? We just came from McCarran. The traveling’s good out that way, for the moment. Real quiet. Is it the same all the way to the border?”

“…A few geckos,” Vulpes mumbled. He was watching the soldiers like a hawk, eyes flitting from one to another. “Radroaches. Nothing of note.”

“That’s good,” the officer said. “That’s good.” He waved loosely at his men, and they began loping up the road. “I’ve got hopes to be back on home turf within the month. Had enough of this damn desert.”

Vulpes wasn’t sure what to say, so he stayed quiet as the line of wary soldiers trudged by. One of them, a young man, did a double take as he passed. Before Vulpes knew it it, the soldier was drawing his sidearm, and pointing it shakily at him. Vulpes responded almost purely by instinct, raising the rifle back to his shoulder and training it on the man.

“It’s the Courier, Sarge! He’s got the mail bag, he’s the fucking Courier!”

“Stand down, Reinier!”

“He’s the _fucking Courier_ , Sarge, it’s _his goddamn fault-_ ”

“Chuck!” one of the other soldiers hissed, reaching for Reinier’s raised weapon, but Reinier danced away, breathing hard, trembling. Vulpes trembled too- the barrel of his rifle fluttered in the air, but it never strayed too far from center mass.

“I’m _a_ courier,” he asserted, “not _the_ Courier.”

“Stand _down_ , Reinier, or so help me, I will let this man deal with you and write you off as a Dam casualty!”

The brave soldier who had tried to get Reinier’s gun made a second attempt, and this time he was able to take gentle hold of his comrade’s arm, guiding his aim to the ground. Feeling the eyes on him, Vulpes reluctantly followed suit.

“For fuck’s sake, Reinier,” the officer breathed, squeezing the muscle at the back of his neck. He shot a rueful look at Vulpes as the other NCR soldiers shooed Reinier along westward, leaving their sergeant behind to catch up. “Real sorry about that. Boys had a rough time at the Dam, and tensions are a little high.”

Vulpes stared flatly at him for a moment, still uncertain of what kind of reaction the man expected.

“Well,” the sergeant said, finally caving to Vulpes’ reticence. “Be careful out there.”

The sergeant stepped away from Vulpes and began trotting to catch up with his squad. Vulpes watched them slowly recede into the distance, and then continued on to the east.

* * *

_“The knife at your back,” Caesar remarked out of the blue one day, making Vulpes tense where he stood, watching a handful of bickering decani leave Caesar’s tent with arms held behind his back. “I’ve heard you say it a few times. Where’d it come from?”_

_“The legionary who trained me,” Vulpes replied stiffly, without turning to face him. “Spurius. He believed it was better to live and fight dishonorably than to die a hero. Dishonorable soldiers live to fight again, but corpses are useless. He taught his unit that if inaction will get you killed, the only logical thing to do is act.” He didn’t mention how Spurius had trained them more through example rather than instruction. He’d quietly killed seven of his young recruits in various ways before they started taking watches at night, monitoring food preparation, and diligently practicing unarmed combat with each other. Another four still died._

_Caesar frowned as he mouthed the name, trying to remember. He shook his head._

_“Where was this?”_

_“Utah. Many years ago.”_

_“Well, that explains a lot. Seems like odd training advice for a legionary, though. Independent action isn’t Legion protocol.”_

_“…You would know, my lord.”_

_Caesar_ _’s tone was too light to be safe. Vulpes’ joints itched; his whole body wanted to run. What had happened all those years ago bordered on treason, even more than his insubordination as Decanus. Most of the recruits involved were dead now, in one skirmish or another. To his knowledge, only two remained who knew what happened: his former subordinate, Gaius, and himself._

_The knife had pressed at Spurius_ _’ back. He stepped forward into three more. In the span of five seconds, an officer was reduced from the terror in the night to a frightened man, mouth fixed in a silent “O”. He’d been dragged to the ground under the weight of adrenaline fueled children, their hearts fluttering in their chests like frightened rabbits’._

_It had been his first kill, he mused. He had been so young, then. The blood had surprised him; it made his hand slip on the knife. He still had a faint scar where he_ _’d cut himself at the base of his forefinger. As his fingers scrubbed nervously across his palms at the small of his back, he could feel the slight ridge of it under the pad of his thumb. He wondered how Gaius remembered that night. If he remembered it. If he still lived to remember it._

_“So, enlighten me. How do you decide?” Caesar asked, drawing him back to the present. He stilled his restless fingers. “How does a foot soldier know when it’s more prudent to disobey orders than to obey?”_

_“He pays attention, sir,” Vulpes said cautiously. He released his grip on his wrist, changed hands, grasped the other wrist painfully tight. “He thinks.”_

_Caesar was quiet. Vulpes stood, shoulders stiff, and listened for signs of overt danger._

_“And how,” Caesar eventually intoned, “can we be certain that this foot soldier has the capacity to make the right decisions? That he is loyal, with the correct values? That his judgment can be trusted?”_

_“Because when it’s all over,” Vulpes all but whispered, nails digging into his wrist, “he goes willingly to the cross.”_

_“Willingly.”_

_Finally, Vulpes turned his head to look straight at Caesar. There was tension in his jaw, and his eyes were adamant._

_“If hesitantly,” he said. “If unhappily. But he goes.”_

_They stared at each other, unyielding, for several seconds. Then, Caesar closed his eyes, raised his eyebrows, and shook his head, dismissing the moment. Vulpes turned his attention to his feet._

_“…Where is he now? Your old commanding officer.”_

_“Dead.” His lips twisted minutely. Not quite a smile. Not quite a sneer. “For all his rigor, he wasn’t cautious enough.” He glanced to Caesar, daring to meet his eyes. “I’ve learned from his mistakes. I look before I leap.”_

* * *

He tried to remember the sound of a thousand men marching. The rhythmic footsteps, laughter, muted conversations. The cadence. The song.

The sound and press of countless men, de facto family, raising their voices as one. A level of human energy that made all the air and earth thrum.

He tried to remember the breathy silence that came before a battle. Body heat caught in the ranks, generating huge clouds of mist in the chill of the twilight. The quiet that came with anticipation, the quiet that came with fear. Brave young recruits subdued by the grave silence of the veterans. Soft sounds, as men compulsively checked their weapons, or brushed reassuring hands against old friends’ backs.

Wordless tunes whispered in the back of his throat as he tried to recreate the old songs in his head. The ones from when he was just a kid, scared shitless by combat and too small for his secondhand boots. The lyrics lingered like an aftertaste in his memory; buried and forgotten, but there to be dug up again by the right melody. Only a few disjointed notes actually emerged as he searched for words, near silent under the breeze against his ear. The songs felt empty in his voice, anyway. They were songs for armies, not lone men. They were songs for soldiers, not spies.

When had Vulpes ever joined in the cadences? When had he ever lent his strength to his comrades with a hand on their shoulder?

The ghosts of memories soured. He fell silent and focused instead on the dull hum of the desert life around him, and the constant unfriendly wind.

* * *

_“Vulpes, if your house was on fire and you could only take one thing out, what would it be?”_

_“I don’t have a house, my lord.” He didn’t even look back at Caesar when he responded, standing at ease and facing the tent flap. They were waiting for Aurelius to show up and report, and appearances were important._

_“If you did.”_

_“I would have nothing in the house, my lord. What belongings I have are in my tent.”_

_“Are you being intentionally obtuse, Vulpes?”_

_Vulpes finally glanced over his shoulder, giving Caesar only a view of the corner of one eye and the sharp angles of a cheekbone, a nose. Nothing telling._

_“It must come naturally, my lord.”_

_Caesar sighed, put on a smile, and held his hands palm-up. Welcoming, with a hint of a threat._

_“Humor me. If you had a house, and your belongings were in the house, and your house were on fire, what would you remove from the house?”_

_“Sir,” Vulpes said after a few seconds, “I have lived my entire life on the front. I own nothing of value. The only thing of worth to me is the Legion, and if it burned, I would burn with it.”_

_Caesar raised his eyebrows, then furrowed them, and opened his mouth to speak, but Aurelius chose that moment to burst into the tent, arguing loudly with a decanus, and the conversation was dropped._

* * *

He passed the burnt out shell of Nipton. The fires had long since gone out, leaving only charred wreckage and soot that drifted in the wind. He stayed on the city’s perimeter, observing the chaos he’d wreaked without quite daring to enter it himself. There was no knowing what he’d find.

The crosses lining the main road in had crumbled to dust. The bodies that had hung from them were only heaps of chalky bone beneath the charcoal. The piled bodies, already burnt once, had all but disappeared. Here and there the splintered head of a femur or the dome of a skull were visible in the debris, but by and large, the message Vulpes had left for the Mojave all those years ago had finally been burnt away. Every sign the Courier had been here was gone too- no murdered lottery winner in the street, no crucified mummies with flayed feet. His sins and the Courier’s, lost now to the vicious entropy that followed them both. A self-consuming damnation… would it ever catch up with them, or would it make them unstoppable?

* * *

_He fought to keep his face blank, and he tried not to stare at the Legate. It was difficult. The man was standing right across from him, barely a yard away, sandwiched between centurions but taking up all of his vision._

_He_ _’d known but hadn’t really considered that working under Caesar meant working alongside Joshua Graham. The right hand, cruel and clenched. The left hand, all flayed skin and bared nerves. Vulpes’ back still wept blood and pus under his armor from his whipping. What the Legate had done to Sissy was still as prominent in his memories as the crack of leather splitting his skin. Graham still wore that same flak jacket. Vulpes squinted intently at it, looking for bloodstains in the camouflage patterning of the faded green fabric before realizing that it wasn’t camouflage, and that the pattern was made from one dark stain layered over another, over another, over another…_

_His fists clenched, slightly crushing the missives he carried. The sound of crinkling paper drew Caesar_ _’s attention. The old man smiled unkindly. Vulpes was never sure if it was because he knew Vulpes’ loathing of Graham, or because he could see the darker wet stripes rising through the red of his tunic, or because meanness was simply his way._

_“Joshua, I’m sure you’ve heard about Vulpes Inculta by now.”_

_“I was at the judgment,” The Malpais Legate reminded him gruffly. He crossed his arms, and let his cold eyes skate over the Frumentarius. Vulpes waited for a spark of recognition._ Ah, yes, I remember when I pacified your tribe and murdered your family, _or,_ aren’t you that frail pathetic child from all those years ago who watched his sister die and did nothing? _The moment never came, and Graham looked to the god-king._ _“I still don’t think he’s necessary. We can take New Vegas without spies.”_

_“At what cost?” Vulpes asked sharply before sense could stop him. Caesar smiled a little more broadly, and even Lucius looked fleetingly over in surprise before returning to scraping the dirt out from under his nails. “A direct frontal assault would fracture our vanguard forces. The NCR is better equipped than us, and they have the home field advantage. All we have are numbers,” said Vulpes, before glancing to Caesar and adding “and righteous fury.”_

_“Which is why a frontal attack is the only one that makes sense.”_

_“If your aim is to maximize human death, certainly!” Vulpes snarled, throwing his hands in the air. “This doesn’t need to be a war of attrition. Subtle action behind enemy lines can change the tides.”_

_“And why should a body count bother me?” Graham scowled at Caesar, the silent third party in the argument, conveying every iota of his disapproval. “I think maybe you’re too soft for your rank if your only worry is to spare our enemies their suffering. They made their beds."_

_“I would build a fortress from the corpses of a thousand slaughtered children to save a thousand and one,” Vulpes said, venom in his voice. The evoked imagery drew a brief, faint grimace of disgust from Caesar. “But if it only takes one carefully planned death to accomplish the same thing, then I would do that instead. When the battle is won, their people are ours. Killing them, we kill ourselves.”_

_“How sweet. A pacifist.”_

_“A pragmatist,” Vulpes corrected him. “I care for efficiency in numbers. You would have us lose a Legionary for every NCR dog we kill. I propose alternatives that would sacrifice the few to save many._ Net gain _. That is what matters._ _”_

_“Ruthless calculus,” Caesar finally remarked, smiling again as if he’d made some salient point to Vulpes’ worth, and he did not elaborate. Vulpes remembered a similar statement from his judgment. It had made as little sense then as it did now._

_“Fairy tale wishes,” Graham countered. “Blood for blood. That’s what works.”_

_Vulpes glowered, unable to contain his hatred._

_“We’re not all as bloodthirsty as you, Legate.”_

Do you remember me? _he wanted to ask in the stunned silence that followed. Rage burned in his veins._ I remember you. I remember what you did. I’ve become a new person, but you haven’t changed. I know you, Legate. Do you know me? Look at me. Look at me, look at me. LOOK AT ME.

_They were looking. All of them. Caesar, the Legate, Lucius, and every Centurion present. Nobody spoke, until at last, the Legate_ _’s face cracked into a terrible, cold smile._

_“We’ll see how long that lasts.”_

* * *

Eighty six tribes, the Legion conquered. Most of them spoke English, but many did not. Vulpes had picked up bits and pieces of their languages over the years, all as dead now as the Latin that replaced them once had been, and soon again would be.

As he slowly took aim at a moving blur beyond his campsite, he let the dusty pidgin rise up in his memory, trotting words he’d only ever heard whispered out for his consideration.

There were words for things like the Courier. It was just a matter of finding the right one.

_Brujo_ , he pondered as he squeezed off three shots. The bullets plunged into the earth, kicking up spats of debris. He set his gun on the ground beside him for a moment and stretched the muscles of his forearms, pushing back the fingers of his trembling hands, cracking his knuckles. He shook his hands in the air like a dog shaking off water as if the motion could evaporate nervous tremors, too. He picked up the gun again.

Brujo encapsulated the bewitching malevolence of the Courier, but it also implied a sort of intrinsic humanity. Maybe not.

He cycled through more options. Wight, but that had the same problem as Brujo. Maybe Shunka Warak’in- that one, he’d heard about before the Legion, as a child in Utah. A vicious beast, misshapen and bloodthirsty and devilishly smart.

“Shunka Warak’in,” he said aloud, feeling the name in his mouth as he fired another two shots. They flew well wide of his target. He exhaled through his nose, jaw clenched, and tried again. The gun kicked against his shoulder, and he was almost certain his aim was true, except no creature uncloaked, and no blood stained the earth. Hm.

Maybe not Shunka Warak’in. A bit of a mouthful, a bit obscure. Maybe more local. The Courier was as regional as the cazador.

“Skin-walker,” he spat as he pulled the trigger, and it felt close, and he instinctively followed a beat later with less local, but more apt “wechuge.” A man who becomes too powerful, and is filled with a wild, indomitable animal spirit. He is smart, he is strong, he will eat you alive.

The next bullet definitely tore through the suspect shimmer before plunging into the fat green pad of a cactus.

_Eidolon_ , he thought nastily to himself. _Try that one while you waste your bullets shooting at your ghosts_.

A breeze rattled through the brush. There was no sign of animal life, beyond the crows that circled well above.

_Nothing there,_ he told himself as he angrily stowed the gun and curled against a rock. _Just your imagination,_ he told himself as he ignored the persisting shimmers that stalked his periphery. _You_ _’ve finally broken,_ he told himself as he tuned out the scrape of claws on baked earth.

* * *

_“Do you play chess, Vulpes?” Caesar was sitting sideways at the picnic table the Praetorians had dragged into his personal quarters some years earlier, straddling the bench with an elbow on the splintered table as he ate an apple. Vulpes was seated at the opposite corner of the table, tense as he stared at the map laid out in front of him. He was supposed to be pitching ideas on how to further demoralize NCR troops and push the front further west, but he had a monster of a headache, his vision was strangely blurred, and even in the shade of Caesar’s tent, everything was just too bright. A headache like this hadn’t struck him in years. He ground his fingers into his forehead and closed his eyes._

_“No, my lord.”_

_“Huh.” Caesar took a bite from his apple, watching Vulpes with interest. “I would have pegged you as someone who played chess.”_

_“Lanius plays chess,” Vulpes muttered, shoving the heel of one palm forcefully into an eye socket and opening his other eye to peer wearily at the map again. “Looks are deceiving.”_

_Caesar cocked his head, smirking._

_“Did you just insult my Legate?”_

_“He is an insult all on his own,” Vulpes growled despite himself. Thinking hurt too much, and caution was thrown to the wind. Caesar, however, only laughed, spraying a couple small chunks of apple across the table. Vulpes winced and leaned away from the map, closing his eyes again._

_“You didn’t like the first Legate, either,” Caesar remarked, and Vulpes didn’t comment because the Burned Man was taboo, and even hearing Caesar mention him felt dangerous. “So why don’t you like chess? Surely not just because Lanius enjoys it.”_

_“I’m not that petty,” was the bitterly murmured response, and a moment later, “my lord.” A pause as Vulpes flicked a piece of apple off his map with the tip of his pencil. There was still a wet spot over the town of Searchlight where the juice and spit had soaked in. “I don’t like chess because it’s reductive, and naive. War is not two lines of soldiers marching at each other on an even playing field. War has no rules. It’s messy. It’s unfair. You win by cheating. Knock your enemy’s king off the board when they think it’s not possible. Kill a half dozen pawns in one move. Wear enemy colors and stab them in the back. Burn the fields, salt the earth.” He blinked thoughtfully at the map, and circled Searchlight. He looked up at Caesar. His vision still swam; Caesar’s face twisted and rippled nauseatingly in a field of flashing light. “We attack their camp at Searchlight. Flood it with radiation. Kill their troops and scare the survivors. They won’t be able to recover the camp or their equipment.”_

_Caesar chewed his apple. He still stared at Vulpes like he was a particularly strange creature that had wandered in from the wastes._

_“I’m glad you’re working for me.”_

_“Honored.”_

* * *

A dark mood stole over Vulpes, flushing out the numb apathy that had reigned dominant.

It wasn’t that he was lonely, per se, but solitude left him a lot of time for introspection. Especially now that he was a cripple, even if he _was_ a cripple who could walk- everything took longer, and stirred up bitter memories of times when he was whole and capable.

Memories. They never seemed to improve with age. The brighter ones tarnished. The dark ones just got darker.

It wasn’t any one thing bothering him, though, and that just added to the agitation. Why should any of it matter now? Why was he fixating? And what, exactly, had him so worked up? The line of questioning alone set him grinding his teeth.

He didn’t think it was the content so much as the tone. His memory was long, and he’d learned from a young age not to dwell if he could help it. Now, though, dwelling was about all he could do to pass time, and a conversation had five, ten, twenty years ago sounded different to his older ears than it had then. His cynical streak had grown to a broad stripe, and armed with all the skills of a Frumentarius and the experience of a lifetime, it picked through every word and gesture.

_I_ _’m glad you’re working for me._

Or was it _I_ _’m glad you’re working for_ ME _?_

Something so small as emphasis, and it changed everything. Gratitude twisted into mistrust. I’m glad you’re working for me. I’m glad you’re not working for them. I’m glad your sharp edges are all pointing away. You’re dangerous. I don’t trust you.

Lucius hadn’t trusted him. Lanius hadn’t either, justified though he eventually was. Surely Caesar, though- if _anyone_ , surely Caesar had trusted him?

But the constant questions… the trolley. The house fire. Oh, he’d had his suspicions at the time, but he’d also willfully turned a blind eye in the interest of loyalty. He knew those conversations for what they were now. Questions about his _character._ Questions about hobbies, interests, _values_. Questions about his insubordination, time and time again. Over and over, fumbling attempts to vivisect Vulpes and hold the bits and pieces that made him to the light, examining the profile and searching for defects.

An unpleasant prickle rolled down his spine. Anger. He didn’t get angry often.

The Legion had _made_ him, and they had the gall to hold him at arm’s length like a rabid dog. When had he ever bitten them? When had he ever so much as snapped? Never bite the hand that feeds! That’s the first rule every scabby runt learns, and they expect him to be so foolish as to go for the throat?!

Vulpes snarled, and flung a crutch at the ground. A scream pushed at his chest, but he kept it bottled. He was angry, not foolish. A scream attracts unwanted attention. And somehow, his presence of mind just made him angrier. He had _never_ just screamed. Not when the Legion fell, not when he was taken before Caesar for judgment, not even when he’d first been stolen from his tribe and molded into an obedient weapon.

They’d lined up his mother, his aunts, his cousins, his sisters, and the Malpais Legate had caved in their teeth under the butt of a rifle, one by one, until the air was thick with the cries and wails of the brutalized victims. And the panicked gurgle of Sissy- constant and overwhelming- as she drowned in her own blood. Graham had _missed_ , he’d hit her in the eye and nose before striking again and catching her in the jaw. Shattered teeth swam in the thick blood that filled her mouth. Gouts shot a few inches into the air as she gagged and choked.

Vulpes had been silent, watching transfixed as his sister jerked and twitched for minutes while Legionaries did nothing, until he was yanked away by a hand around his upper arm. He hadn’t screamed once.

His chest heaved as he controlled each breath, tempering his rage through willpower alone.

Caesar trusted Graham. Caesar did not trust Vulpes. Graham murdered children for personal satisfaction. Vulpes, at least, had the Legion in mind. The Legion was _all_ there was room for in his mind. He was a _good legionary_. What had it gotten him? His loyalty nearly got him crucified; his dedication disturbed those who had been conscripted as adults. But they’d _made_ him like this. He didn’t choose it, they _designed_ him, and they immediately loathed him for what he’d become.

Oh, and they’d worked so hard at it, molding perfect soldiers from the dregs of the waste. Take a child, give him a knife, send him to war. The weak are killed- unnatural selection. The strong live and learn. They learn how to murder men twice their size, and how to find an exit from every situation, and how to funnel terror and desperation into ferocious violence. And the boys become men, and the men only know murder, and suddenly they realize their mistake, because the old guard isn’t quite as vicious or resilient as they thought they were, and now these finely crafted death machines are creeping up the ranks and making everyone _uneasy_.

_Broken men,_ Vulpes thought. _We were broken men from the start._

The scream dissolved into an anguished sob, small enough to slip free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of PART 1 of this 3 part fic. Phew!
> 
> I wanted to let you all know that I'll be going on a trip very shortly and preparations are eating up my free time, so I'm going to take a couple weeks off. I'll be back with the next chapter April 2 at the very latest!
> 
> Thank you all again for being the best bunch of readers I could hope for. Your comments and kudos are much appreciated!


	7. Chapter 7

part 2: the cripple who walks

 

 _Two weeks_.

Two weeks, it took him, to limp into Freeside, dusty and panting with his crutches strapped to his back with a stretch of twine. His stump leg was bound so tightly under several layers of cotton that he could barely feel anything but the constant ache of the pressure and the burn of overtaxed muscles.

He’d never been so relieved to see New Vegas. The trip there had been largely uneventful, but he passed more and more NCR troops the closer he got to the city, and his missing leg drew as much attention as the Mojave Express bag did.

The times he was alone on the road were just as nerve wracking. Every rustle of brush or clatter of dislodged gravel had him on the verge of panic, eyes darting around the waste in search of a telltale warp in the air. When he stopped to nap at noon and night, it was the shallowest sleep. Even something to light as the breeze on his skin jolted him awake, heart hammering with adrenaline as he pressed himself deeper into whatever nook or cranny he had curled up in.

He couldn’t remember ever being so exhausted, even back when his tribe was first conquered by the Legion and he began his training. And he had taken so long on the road, he had gone through more food and water than he had realized he’d need. His supply of food was almost gone, and his canteen was empty and had been for hours. He was acutely aware of the grit in his dry mouth as he limped up the street, scanning for danger in the mouth of every alley and any sign of safe shelter. He wanted nothing more than to find a dark quiet place to collapse and get the weight off his tortured leg.

He had several packages to deliver in the city, though, and the nearest delivery was at the Old Mormon Fort. He had been promised caps on delivery of each parcel ( _”-but the letters are prepaid,”_ the old man had told him, _“I’ll pay you to take them, but you won’t get paid for delivering, so just drop those off where the labels say,”_ ), but he suspected the Followers would give him water too if he asked them. That was their way. Once again, disbelief at the foolish charity of the dissolute washed over him, but he had moved beyond chiding them for it. That would make him a fool too, to bite the hand that fed him.

The streets were crowded, even in Freeside. Kings leaned against street corners, and grubby wastelanders made their way to and fro, carrying food and tools and scrap to sell. Most ignored him, but he was hyperaware of the eyes that _did_ linger. A ghoul, begging where he sat against a wall. A King, pouting at him over a popped collar. Several more discreet watchers, glancing as they followed him or moved in the back streets to peer from the shadows.

He limped faster, and very visibly rested his hand on the knife in his belt. A sharp glare aimed at the hidden watchers warned them off. Most vanished deeper into the alleys, and one or two blinked lazily at him before stepping into the street and joining the flow of foot traffic, putting themselves in plain sight and declaring themselves harmless. The predator, after all, does not let the prey see them if they’re on the hunt.

He reached the perimeter wall of the Old Mormon Fort, and followed it to the front gate. He could hear the murmur of human crowds rising over the crumbling brick, but he was still shocked when he stepped inside the Fort and was stricken with a pang of heartache. The scene was so like life in the Legion Fort; tents were lined up in neat rows, and cots within. Followers strode from tent to tent with purpose; he heard orders called over the base thrum of conversation and activity. Bring me two Stim-Paks. Take these sheets to the basket to be cleaned. Go pick up those supplies from the Strip.

It was only when a few irritable men in white labcoats pushed past him with a crate held between them that he realized he had stopped and was blocking the gate. He lowered his head and hobbled to the side, searching the bustling crowd for the person in charge. It was loud here; it reminded him so much of _his_ Fort on the hill, which had been thriving only weeks before, and it overwhelmed him- too many bodies, moving, talking. The press of _attention_ , making his joints itch and skin crawl. He wanted nothing more than to back into a dark corner and pray for everyone to leave, but he desperately needed the caps from the delivery. His only weapons were a light rifle and a small knife. At the very least, he needed a machete, and he held out hopes for a pistol. Suddenly, close range combat felt more dangerous than ever, and he would take any advantage he could get. So, steeling himself, he took another step forward, trying to determine the hierarchy among the doctors and volunteers.

She found him before he found her; he was about to work up the nerve go ask a Follower who had peeled away from the group to leaf through paperwork who he should be making his delivery to when a slender woman with a striking mohawk rounded the corner of the guardhouse and almost ran right into him. He took a hurried step back, grabbing at the wall to steady himself, and the woman about dropped the stack of clipboards she carried.

“Damn, you scared me!” she yelped, shuffling the clipboards to the crook of one arm so she could press a hand to her breastbone. Collecting herself, she looked him over, and saw the mail sack he carried. She could hardly contain her delight; it lit up her face. “You’re with the Mojave Express! It’s been weeks, I’ve been worried- please, come this way, I’m sure you’re thirsty…”

Vulpes followed her wordlessly into the Fort, weaving past a couple tents of patients rank with the sweet stench of vomit, to a small area in the back of the fort. A crate of water in various reused glass and plastic bottles laid on the ground beside baskets of clean laundry, dirty laundry, used needles, bloody tubing…

“My name’s Julie Farkas,” the woman said, pushing a plastic bottle of water at him from the crate. He barely spared a glance at how brown it looked in the daylight before he twisted the cap off and downed it all. When the bottle was empty, he coughed, clearing away the last of the dust from the road. “I’m in charge of the Followers of the Apocalypse here at the Old Mormon Fort. You do have mail for us, right?”

Vulpes nodded, still coughing slightly, and he struggled to untangle the Mojave Express bag from his rifle and crutches. Julie watched, annoyingly sympathetic. She’d seen how he limped, and the crutches weren’t a reassuring sight.

“Can’t have been easy, coming all that way on a prosthetic.” Vulpes suppressed a scowl and a scathing response, even though he knew his leg was cut up from the prosthetic’s straps, chafed, and developing strange sores near the stump. He didn’t want her _pity_. “Somebody could take a look at your leg while you’re here,” she suggested kindly.

“No. Thank you.” His voice was rough; it had been several days since he’d spoken at all, and weeks since he’d said more than a few sentences. He picked several packages from his bag, wrapped in brown paper, and a few letters. He held those out to Julie with one hand while he searched a pocket of his armor for the corresponding delivery receipts.

“Oh, good,” Julie sighed, taking the packages and running relieved fingers over the paper they were bound in. “We were worried these had gotten lost. It was hard to get medical supplies _before_ the battle. Now that the NCR is retreating, the flow has almost dried up completely. These will make a real difference here. Thank you for bringing them.”

“I’m being paid,” Vulpes grumbled, forcefully punching the rest of the mail back down in his mail bag and throwing it back over his shoulder.

“Even so. You have no idea how much good you’ve just done. But speaking of payment- wait here.”

Farkas turned, and jogged back toward the guardhouse, leaving him standing alone in the corner to watch the flow of people through and between tents, and slowly retreat to lean against the crumbling wall. The Courier’s Enclave doctor had been a Follower here, before the Dam. Vulpes looked through the crowd carefully, trying to ignore how the hubbub made his heart race, but didn’t see any sign of him now. Perhaps he hadn’t returned after rallying the remains of the Enclave to fight. He’d been too busy with the Courier to see where the Vertibird had flown off to when they retreated.

Julie Farkas returned with a slim drawstring bag in her hand, a nervous grimace on her face. She fidgeted with the strings as she looked beseechingly up at Vulpes. He wasn’t a tall man, but he had a few inches on her, and her nerves made her look even smaller.

“So, I know we owe forty caps for the delivery, but we’ve only got twenty eight right now. We’ve had to put our funds into alternate sources for supplies and it’s cost us more-”

“Just give me what you have,” Vulpes said. If they didn’t have the promised amount, some was still better than nothing, when he desperately needed to get hold of more weaponry and ammunition. He didn’t suppose that this Follower woman had it in her to lie about their funds.

“ _Thank you_ ,” she said emphatically, pressing the bag into Vulpes’ hand and folding it in hers. He shifted back onto his prosthetic despite the pain and pulled his hand free, uncomfortable under the weight of her gratitude. She wasn’t done, though. She pulled two more bottles of water from the crate and thrust them insistently at him. “Listen, I know we don’t have all the caps this time, but it would mean more than you know if you kept bringing deliveries. There aren’t many couriers left around and most of the caravans have pulled back their business.”

Vulpes shoved the water into his pack and ducked his head gruffly, growing even more uncomfortable. Julie finally seemed to notice, because she stopped thanking him, and instead escorted him to the door, politely ignoring how he lurched with every other step. Or so he thought- before he could open the gate, she held a hand up to get his attention again.

“I’m serious about your leg. You could cause yourself some serious damage if you overuse it… and I’d guess you have. Circulation problems, ulcers… After the fighting, I’m sorry to say we’re getting pretty good at treating the health problems amputees face,” she said.

“I can take care of myself,” Vulpes grumbled. It was more than pride at play, he swore to himself. He just had no intention of making himself that vulnerable for people he really didn’t trust. Even the Followers could be dangerous. It was Followers who founded the Legion. It was Followers who got his tribe into bluetoothing. They might be the most medically knowledgeable group left in the wastes, and they might mean for the best, but they had their share of blood on their hands.

“Well, if you change your mind, we’re always here.” Julie watched Vulpes slip through the gate, and called after him, “Thank you again!”

Vulpes barely went ten steps before he hesitated, turning back for the Fort. The gate was just shutting when he caught it.

“Farkas,” he called after the Follower, just loud enough to catch her attention. She turned, surprised. “Does anyone here know anything about night stalkers?”

She pursed her lips thoughtfully.

“Well, we’re more focused on medicine than biology. We have one doctor who I think has had some experience with night stalkers, but I haven’t seen him in… a while. Was there something specific you needed?”

Vulpes shook his head brusquely, blinked at the ground, and looked up at her again.

“What about brain transplants? Like in cyberdogs?”

“That’s a weird juxtaposition, and I can’t say I love what it implies. You’re not the first courier to ask me about this.” Still, she sighed, and continued. “There’s a man up in Jacobstown, Dr. Henry. He’s an expert in cybernetics. I don’t know any more than that. If you want to find him, you’re on your own.” She cast a skeptical glance at his leg. “You might want to think long and hard before you go looking for him, though. Jacobstown is across the Mojave and halfway up a mountain.”

“Thank you,” Vulpes ground out, trying to suppress the bitterness, and he left the Fort again. He still had a few packages to deliver, as well as several bundles of paper mail. Next stop was the Atomic Wrangler, and with luck- he glanced upward, gauging the sky’s deepening blue- he should finish there in time to hunt down a safe place to sleep for the night. Plus, the delivery receipt said he was supposed to get 120 caps on delivery of the unassuming book-sized brown box he carried in his bag. That would hopefully give him enough to replace his weathered rifle with something that packed more of a punch. If not, there was one more delivery he could make, though all of his training urged him against it. He shook the thought from his mind before he could brood too long on it, and focused on his surroundings.

Freeside hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d passed through, months earlier, but even if he’d been completely unfamiliar with the area, all he would have had to do to find the Atomic Wrangler was to follow the obnoxious shouting of the crier stationed outside.

“Hungry? Thirsty? Horny?” He could hear her chirping from half a block away. When he got closer, he saw her standing head and shoulders above the thinning crowd, atop an old crate, where she gyrated and gestured up the street towards the neon sign with the cowboy riding the atom. She caught his vaguely disgusted glance at her and misinterpreted it, winking and putting on what Vulpes assumed was supposed to be a sultry pout. Her fingers glittered with cut crystal “diamonds” as she wiggled them in the direction of the casino. “The Atomic Wrangler has you covered!”

He looked away even as his lips peeled compulsively away from his teeth in a grimace, and he hobbled a little faster, feeling filthy just by being in proximity with one so shamelessly dissolute.

He arrived without incident at the Atomic Wrangler. A cluster of drunkards stumbled out of the door as he reached for it; they didn’t notice him as they tumbled past, loudly laughing and chatting amongst themselves. Vulpes scowled and caught the door before it could close, on edge before he even stepped inside.

And inside was no better- it wasn’t as crowded or noisy as he’d known the casinos on the Strip to be, but this was _the_ gambling location in Freeside, and it was far from empty. If the tables weren’t all full, well, there was at least one stone faced black hat slumped over them with a forest of empty bottles at their side. The building stank like sweat, booze, and cigarette smoke. The lights were kept dim enough that the filth tracked across the floor and the nicotine stains that ringed the ceiling weren’t quite obvious.

It repulsed him.

He wasted no time shoving past groups of red-faced caravaneers and skirting a bit more carefully around clusters of NCR soldiers to force his way to the bar. Before he could even call to the bartender, who was pouring shots for a group of boys who looked too young to be drinking, a rasping voice at his side rose above the dull roar of vice.

“Hey James! Special delivery!”

Startled, Vulpes took a step away from the voice even as he laid eyes on the source- a woman perched on a bar stool, black Stetson pulled low, elbows on the bar. She tilted her hat up with one peeling hand, revealing the milky eyed face of a ghoul. She rakishly waggled what was left of her eyebrows at him. He couldn’t look away fast enough; he restrained himself from taking another step away, if only because he would run into the bar patron on his other side if he did.

Drawn by the ghoul’s call, James scurried towards them, unlabeled bottle still in hand. Like Farkas, his eyes lit up when he saw Vulpes shoving empty glasses aside to lay his Mojave Express bag on the bar.

“Oh, good! Good! You’ve got the- uh, well, you’ve got it!” The man’s smile had started genuine, but became something strained. He glanced around the casino as if looking for someone, and then bent over the bar a little bit in an attempt at a low profile. Classic don’t-notice-me behavior. Vulpes recognized it from the many amateur spies he’d run across in his time. The experts always behaved normally. The scared and untrained always went squirrelly. James was going squirrelly, and it didn’t instill confidence. He removed the mail bag from the bar.

“Payment first,” Vulpes said, pressing the delivery receipt to the counter with fore and middle finger.

“How about a drink?” James asked, artificially bright. “Or a little romp with one of our wonderful escorts? Beatrix here-”

“One hundred and twenty caps,” Vulpes interrupted flatly. The ghoul- Beatrix- laughed.

“I don’t think he’s the romping type.”

James was looking flustered; nearby bar patrons were beginning to take notice of the conversation and he was slowly shrinking behind the bar even as he sent more and more frantic glances towards a dark-clothed lady across the room, who stood with her back to them.

“Okay, listen,” he said in a rush, finally breaking. Sweat shone on his forehead, and his hands were clasped tightly around the counter’s edge. “Francine doesn’t know I ordered these replacement parts, but we _need_ to get Fisto back online-” Beatrix laughed again. “-and this was the only way! I really need that package!”

“One hundred and twenty caps.”

“Aghhh!” James whined his frustration as he frantically raked his fingers through his hair. “Okay! Okay. Look. Francine handles finances. She’ll notice if a hundred caps-”

“Hundred twenty,” Vulpes and Beatrix said together. Vulpes scowled at the ghoul, who grinned crookedly back.

“-a hundred _twenty_ caps goes missing from the register. But I can pay you in kind. Booze! Chems! You want Med-X? I’ll give you _ten doses._ That’s more than a hundred twenty caps worth.”

“Take the offer,” Beatrix suggested, swirling the dregs of her whiskey in her glass. “The Followers will buy it from you at markup.”

“Please,” James pleaded, releasing the counter’s edge to clasp his hands together in front of him.

Vulpes considered it, for a long moment. It was near sundown; the Followers would be closed for business by the time he got back to them. But neither James nor the ghoul were lying- from his dealings with the Omertas he knew that ten doses of Med-X should net him closer to two hundred caps than one twenty. And, of course, there was the insistent pounding in his stump, and a sharp pain that shot up the back of his leg with every step. Med-X could help with that. He could keep a few doses, sell the rest… he’d just have to find somewhere safe until morning.

“… Fine,” he said at last. “Med-X first. Then you get your package.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” James groaned, shaking his clasped hands slightly in Vulpes’ direction. “Beatrix, make sure nobody steals anything, I’m going to go grab the chems.”

He watched James’ rapid retreat across the crowded casino until he vanished in the crowd, and then continued staring at the point where he’d lost sight of him. He could feel the ghoul watching him with cool interest. His skin crawled. He wished he could disappear into the crowd, too. Get the eyes off him.

“You’re new to the courier gig,” Beatrix finally said. She downed the last of her whiskey, then leaned over the untended bar to help herself to the bottle. She poured herself another drink. “I don’t know you. Weird thing is though, you look kind of familiar.”

Vulpes very actively said nothing, refusing to acknowledge her.

“I used to be a guard for the Followers,” the ghoul volunteered. “I’ve met just about every courier in the Mojave at this point. Even _the_ Courier.” She chuckled when Vulpes couldn’t help but shoot a perturbed frown at her. His discomfort seemed to amuse her. “Yeah. Real psycho, that guy. I always thought he was weird, but nobody ever thought he could pull shit like he did at the Dam.”

Again, there was a very notable lack of response.

“That’s recent,” she added, gesturing at his leg. He saw it from the corner of his eye. “Were you there?”

Silence.

“Yeah, I thought so. Only people the Courier hurt flinch like that when he’s mentioned. So what got you? Bullet? Machete? Night stalker?”

Vulpes was saved as James pushed through a knot of his patrons and slid back behind the bar, a cigar box in his hands. He laid it gingerly on the bar, and pushed it across to Vulpes. The fox lifted the lid to see the heap of Med-X inside. He walked his fingers through them, counting, and closed the box.

“Ten doses,” Vulpes confirmed. He tapped the delivery receipt that still laid on the counter. “Sign.”

As James scrawled his untidy signature with the stub of a pencil he’d scrounged up from somewhere behind the bar, Vulpes swapped the cigar box for James’ package. The moment pencil left paper, he snatched up the receipt, and limped away as quickly as he could, before the ghoul could continue to pry.

He pushed back through the crowd and was relieved to emerge out into the street again. The air was hot and dusty, but at least it didn’t reek. He had only been inside for a few minutes, but it was getting darker out; long shadows striped the golden streets. In any other settlement the crowds would be thinning, but Vegas never slept, and it seemed like there were even more people milling about than before. A good proportion seemed drunk. They stumbled, they laughed, they yelled.

He cast a doubtful eye over the foot traffic, and turned instead for the less crowded side streets. He might luck out and find an empty building to squat in for the night. Regardless, he wanted nothing to do with other pedestrians, especially inebriated ones. It was hard enough walking without people barreling into him, and on these streets you’re liable to get mugged if you’re not-

“Well, what do we have here?”

Vulpes had been halfway up a narrow street between crumbling buildings when a shadow detached from an alleyway. He glanced around; there was nobody else nearby. The next closest pedestrian was a full block up the street, and still walking. His attention shifted quickly back to the man approaching him. Short, but broad. He wore no armor, unless the chaps he wore over his jeans counted. His white wifebeater was stained with sweat and something darker- maybe oil, maybe blood. He was idly twirling a baseball bat in his hand as he sauntered over.

“Would you look at this, Sammy! A cripple that walks! It’s a fuckin’ miracle.”

Another man stepped out of the alley. He was slighter than the man with the baseball bat, but no lightweight, and there was a butcher’s knife stuck under his belt. He remained silent and watchful, keeping a slight distance as his friend began circling.

“Do you think he can do other miracles? Maybe he can make money appear out of nowhere, hm?” The man jabbed at Vulpes’ mail sack with the bat. Vulpes quietly endured, waiting for his moment. His rifle was out of reach, but he had a knife and close combat skills. If he could disable the man with the bat quick enough, he could probably handle Sammy and his knife. But Sammy was still watching him, and his shrewd stare suggested his light shone a little brighter than his friend’s.

“He’s a courier,” Sammy finally remarked, breaking his silence. From his tone, it was impossible to tell how he felt about this fact, if he felt anything.

“Put all your bags and weapons on the ground and step away,” Baseball Bat ordered, “or we’ll see if you can rise from the dead.”

“I have nothing worth stealing,” Vulpes lied flatly. He made no motion to set his belongings on the ground. He had the suspicion that if he did, he would only die quicker.

“Put your shit on the ground,” Sammy ordered, echoing Baseball Bat.

“No.”

“Last fucking chance, crip,” Baseball Bat said, and he made another jab at Vulpes, but this time he was ready. The bulky man seemed to anticipate his victim making a grab for the bat, but he didn’t expect Vulpes to push it instead of pull. Rather than knocking Vulpes off balance and pulling him in, the man bashed himself in the ribs with the handle of his own bat, wheezing curses and stumbling back. Vulpes took the opportunity to shrug a crutch off his back and swing it viciously towards his head. It connected against the man’s ear with a sharp crack, and he crumpled.

Sammy hesitated rather than charging in. A _smart_ man. He lingered yards away, watching Vulpes carefully as the fox dropped the crutch and freed his rifle, slowly bringing it to aim at him.

“You have a knife,” Vulpes said quietly. “I have a gun.”

“Let me walk. You can have what you want off of him,” Sammy offered, nodding minutely towards his ex-partner.

On cue, the larger man let out a groan of mixed pain and rage as he came to, and he began to twitch and grab at the cracked pavement. On reflex, Vulpes swung the rifle down, and fired two shots into his chest, stilling him. In that time, Sammy quickly reached behind his back and brandished a snubnosed revolver from his waistband-

_POP POP._

The revolver dropped, unfired, from Sammy’s hand. He followed close behind. Vulpes slumped slightly with relief. He stooped momentarily to grab his crutch and sling it back over his shoulder by its makeshift twine strap again, but kept his rifle at the ready. Gunfire drew scavengers out of the woodwork, and he intended to make the most of a bad situation. He searched Sammy’s body first, and found a modest pouch of caps hanging from his neck under his shirt. Nothing else of note, besides the gun. He glanced around for encroaching vultures before moving to the man with the baseball bat. He found fewer caps on him, but there were a couple doses of Psycho in his pocket, worth plenty to the right buyer.

He peered upward, into the western sky over the rooftops. Night had just about fallen, and there were worse things wandering the back alleys of Freeside than Sammy and his anonymous friend. His stump hurt too much to be climbing up and down crumbling staircases in abandoned buildings anyway. With the weight of the scavenged caps on his belt, he turned and headed back for the Atomic Wrangler. It was as busy as ever when he wove his way back inside. He could hear faint screams of feigned orgasms drifting through the walls over the radio and half-yelled conversations.

The ghoul had, thankfully, wandered off, but James was still manning the bar, and dread washed the color out of his face the moment he laid eyes on Vulpes again.

“I signed the damn chit!” James cried, shoving a couple beers to patrons further down the bar, nearly spilling them. “I don’t owe you nothing!”

Vulpes yanked Sammy’s bag of caps from his belt, and placed it firmly on the bartop. He let some of the caps rattle tellingly under the cage of his fingers.

“I want a room.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I'm home from my trip, and I've got a working computer for the time being! Thank you all so much for your patience and understanding during the brief hiatus. We're back on our weekly schedule, now! I hope you're as excited as I am for the second leg of this story. Vegas, baby!
> 
> As always, thank you for reading and leaving me kudos and comments. They're so, so appreciated.


	8. Chapter 8

The Med-X might have been a mistake, Vulpes mused as he stalked up the street towards the strip. Not because it didn’t work. It worked _great_.

That was the problem.

He’d gotten his room from James (”For the hour, or for the night? Just be gone by noon, ‘kay?”) and peeled his prosthetic off his leg with a shuddering exhale. Somehow, it hurt more to sit down and take the weight off it than to keep standing. The straps of the contraption had dug blue-black furrows into his skin. The sores on his stump had gotten worse. Skin had slipped in a few places.

Carefully, he dabbed his leg as clean as one could hope to get it with the hotel-casino’s grungy tap water, and began the process of removing and oiling his armor, maintaining his weapons, and washing the worst of the grime off himself.

And he’d thought about the Med-X again, as he had every few minutes since he’d gotten his hands on it. Just a little shot, and the throbbing pain would die down, and maybe he could sleep for a little while. Just this once. He’d sell the rest in the morning.

It had been years since he’d really been deft with a hypodermic needle- he hadn’t handled them regularly since he was just a boy, before he fell into the hands of the Legion- but the memory was still there. It was nothing to find a vein, pull the skin taught, insert the needle…

He injected half a syringe, then hesitated, and withdrew the needle. No need to go overboard; he just wanted to take the edge off. And when the world receded slightly, and he laid back on the motheaten blankets to be enveloped in the fuzzy, foreign warmth of opium, it occurred to him that this was exactly why chems had been forbidden in the Legion.

He slept soundly until he didn’t. By morning his leg hurt like he’d never taken Med-X at all, and the siren song of the half-dose still sitting on the stained porcelain ledge of the sink was too much to resist.

Just the one dose. He’d sell the rest in the afternoon. He had to a delivery to make first.

He was out of the room well before noon, lurching more than limping. James was nowhere to be seen; the scowling woman in all black took his key with little more than a glance and he was on his way. And his leg felt _good_ , or maybe, maybe he just didn’t care that it _didn_ _’t_.

Yes, maybe this was a mistake. He could get used to this. Even the anxiety of what he was about to do was dulled.

Gamblers and drunks didn’t travel this early. Only locals were out and about. Casino whores, straggling home after long nights of performing their satire. Casino security, doing the same- they dropped the acts of stoic strength the moment they stepped out the doors, collapsing into normal people, shoulders slumped and tired as they wound their way homeward. In the opposite direction, cooks and shopkeepers scurried bright eyed to their places of business. A dogmeat hawker was already setting his booth up in the street. Between them all, NCR soldiers wandered this way and that: front line soldiers on leave, and officers stationed in the city.

Vulpes followed a stream of them towards the gates to the Strip. Even with House and the Courier gone, the Securitrons still patrolled, clicking and whirring as they scanned the faces and cross-checked them with the list of approved visitors.

It had been months since Vulpes had been to the Strip. He hadn’t set foot beyond those gates since well before the second Battle, and the nightmarish hunt for the Courier that ensued. But even now, he had the image of Securitrons rolling out of the Fort during the battle playing on repeat in his head. Securitrons worked for the Courier. The Courier controlled them. Did they report to him? Did he monitor their actions?

Would he know Vulpes was here?

Would his Securitrons stop him?

Kill him?

He stood to the side, watching the line of NCR brass funnel through the checkpoint. Half of them were clutching thermoses of post-war “coffee” brewed from old tobacco and honey mesquite. A good handful were poring over reports and letters while they waited. None of them seemed to be paying much attention to the robots.

How could they forget so quickly, so _easily_?

He watched a while, as, one by one, the officers were identified, approved, and strode off through the gates. When the crowd thinned, he warily took a place at the end of the line, heart in his throat. He thought he could live with execution by Securitron- well, figuratively- but the thought that the Courier could use this to keep track of him didn’t sit well. He didn’t want to imagine scenarios where he _wasn_ _’t_ immediately killed. He wanted to believe that there was little the Courier could do to faze him now, but he’d been the primary tactician for the Legion in its last years. He knew better than anyone that there was always something more to lose.

The man in front of him shuffled off through the gates, and then it was Vulpes’ turn. His stomach squirmed as he forced himself to step forward into the robots’ range. He shrank in their sights instinctively as the nearest rolled over, looming over him with the impassive projected face of a hardbitten soldier.

Beeping. A grinding whir, like tape being dragged across a faulty reel. Vulpes stood rigid, sweating as he fixed his eyes on the ground and waited.

“Welcome back, Mister Fox,” the robot finally growled, and then he was off, shuffling so quickly that it was almost a skip, with his peg leg dragging at every step. He very mindfully turned his face away from the looming tower of the Lucky 38 as he rushed past, only slowing as he made it through the unguarded second gates that opened to the Tops, the Ultra-Luxe, and the monorail station.

Against all his sense, he began cautiously approaching the station. Military police were already out and about, monitoring the thin foot traffic and watching the stumbling, drunken soldiers with particular care. They spared Vulpes a glance or two as he passed by, but showed no particular interest. This struck Vulpes as strange until he realized that some of the stumbling soldiers were, in fact, missing legs. Others had truncated arms. One, seated on a bench outside the monorail, had his eyes completely covered by pus-stained bandages. Not all the soldiers were maimed, but enough were that Vulpes’ condition wasn’t unusual. He wasn’t sure if that was a comfort, but he could only be glad that nobody stared. He loathed the stares. There had been a time when he’d effortlessly melted into the background, free to observe and digest. Now it felt like he was the main attraction of a freak show that consisted only of himself, and he dragged it wherever he went.

A knot was developing in his chest, and it tightened as he finally reached the front doors of the monorail station. A pair of MPs nodded as he walked between them and let himself inside. So far so good.

Inside, there was a magnificently worn down room. The ceiling tiles were frayed and sagging. The lights were dimly flickered. Bucket chairs stood in empty rows. Across the room was a U-shaped reception counter, with a humming computer. Behind it, a young soldier in fatigues punched away at the keys.

Vulpes loped over, eyes darting all around for some sort of trap. The room remained cavernous in every sense, but mundane.

“I have a package,” he mumbled. “For a Lieutenant Sorenson.”

“LT’s not in yet,” the soldier responded flatly without looking up. “Might not be for a while. Maybe not at all, I don’t know. They don’t tell me shit.” Tap tap tap at the keyboard, and a hard punch to the return key. Vulpes fished for the package in his mail bag and laid it on the counter. He flinched to see a copy of the “YOU ARE HIS BITCH” propaganda poster with the rough guess of his face on it pasted there, along with several others. Grimacing, he slid the package over to cover the face.

“Will you sign?” he asked. _Will you pay?,_ he didn’t.

“Nope.”

Vulpes blinked. He glanced around again. The soldier stopped typing, and finally looked up at him, his eyes sleepily half-hooded, eyebrows slightly raised.

“You’re new,” he said. “Official mail comes through official channels. There’s no discretionary budget allotted for third party deliveries, so we have to pay out of pocket. _Ergo_ ,” he said with a little more emphasis, bottom lip drooping slightly, “nobody signs for anybody else in the NCR ranks. Not unless they’re a kiss-ass, anyway.”

Of all the problems Vulpes had imagined in the course of delivering a package to an NCR officer on the Strip, this had never entered his mind. The receptionist seemed to register his bemusement and took a little pity.

“You can leave any letters addressed to troops on the Strip here with me, though. They’re pre-paid. There’s a dropbox along the wall for outgoing shit, but unless you got the key, it’s not your problem.”

He returned his attention to the green glow of the computer screen, and Vulpes slowly dug out the bundle of letters he was supposed to deliver here. When he laid it on the counter, the receptionist pulled it over the edge and onto his desk without looking away from the monitor.

“Well, bad news,” the man said blandly. “Just got the message that Sorenson’s tied up at McCarran for the forseeable future. Guess he got caught up in the battle post-mortem. The _good_ news,” he added, pausing to squint at the screen and hammer out a couple sentences, “is that I just secured you passage on the nine-thirty transport to McCarran, departing in…” He checked a small analog clock beside the computer. “…twelve minutes.”

“…Why?” Vulpes was having trouble processing the information. His mind was just a little too fuzzy, and kindness from an NCR soldier was the last thing he expected. He was also thrown by the apparent expectation that he would just waltz into McCarran like that was a normal thing to do. It had taken years of work to get a single Legion mole into the damn camp. The thought of walking in- _riding in on the monorail_ , himself, in the flesh, simultaneously conjured images of firing squads. He had the snub nosed pistol, at least- did he really need the caps that badly? And there was the Med-X. Yes. He was going to sell the Med-X.

His dumbstruck bafflement must have been obvious. For a moment, the soldier looked a little less sleepy and a little more wistful. He shoved lightly against the edge of the desk, rolling his office chair back a foot or two and revealing a left leg that had been amputated mid-thigh. The leg of his fatigues had been neatly trimmed and sewn shut to fit his stump. He gave a lopsided shrug and reeled himself back into his desk.

“I mean, I wouldn’t want to hobble four miles on crutches if I could take the monorail and be there in five minutes. Can’t imagine it’s much better with a prosthetic. Medic said I lost too much leg to make it worth getting one, but a few guys I was in physical therapy with got ‘em and had all kinds of issues.” He raised his eyebrows again, reverting to his sleepy expression. “Lost my leg a couple years ago. Frag mine out near Camp Golf. No offense, but you look like you’re still trying to figure all this shit out. You lose yours at the Dam?”

Vulpes hesitated, then nodded. Better to just let him think what he wanted. The man didn’t seem hostile, so he presumably didn’t suspect Vulpes was Legion.

“Yeah,” the receptionist said, “Too many guys lost something out there. Lives, limbs, minds…” He paused to scrunch his face up in consideration of something. “You know, I’ve been behind this desk long enough that I’ve seen most of the front line line pass through on their leave. I sent all these poor fucks off on the monorail to fight, and the ones that came back, came back in pieces. And I gotta look at them all when they come back to the Strip and try to forget how shitty their hand was.” He shook his head. “I think you mercs still got it worse than us NCR guys, though. You get hired by the NCR to do the same work, but you don’t even got a home base to crawl back into and lick your wounds. I mean, shit, it’s been what, a month since the Dam? And you’re already out working your ass off to survive, minus one leg. Me, I get my leg blown off by an asshole powder ganger and I get a nice cushy desk job and rumors of a pension. Shitty how that works out.”

Vulpes continued to silently stare at the soldier, uncertain what to say, if anything. Especially when he saw nothing good about sitting trapped in this dump of a station day in and day out. In the Legion- at least, on the front line- cripples were put down or left behind. If you couldn’t walk, you were useless. He had a hard time believing the NCR was much kinder to theirs, and their decision to dump a cripple in this hole just supported that disbelief. An NCR soldier who can’t walk is just as useless as a Legionary who can’t walk, after all. And he was discovering more and more every day, to his own dismay, that the NCR and the Legion really weren’t so different. He’d always been factually aware of certain similarities, but now, standing ( _leaning_ ) where he was, they looked like two faces of the same beast.

“Anyway,” the receptionist sad sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing down at his keyboard. “You’re gonna want to head up those stairs over there. There’ll be some guards stationed on the platform. Your weapons will have to be confiscated, of course, but you’ll get them back when you leave McCarran, no worries.”

“Confiscated,” Vulpes echoed hollowly. Mild alarm began trying to push through the warm, comforting blanket of Med-X.

“Just a security measure. Couriers are kind of, uh. Under a lot of scrutiny these days. You know.” He shrugged. “But it’s not just you. Everyone has to go through security, and all non-personnel get frisked. You should have seen it when a Gun Runner tried to get a shipment through to McCarran. I never saw that much red tape in my life. But here I go rambling again. You should get up to the platform; the next train is scheduled to arrive any minute, and you still need to get past security.”

Extremely conscious of the man’s eyes following him, Vulpes nodded and shuffled off to the stairs, fighting every instinct to either bolt or put a bullet into the receptionist’s head.

Him. In McCarran. No weapons.

_The Med-X was a bad idea_.

He climbed the stairs, heart beating a little faster than normal, and that was worrying too, because doesn’t Med-X slow your heartbeat down? And his stomach felt like it was trying to claw its way up his throat- what was causing _that_?

He paused halfway up the stairs where nobody could see him and leaned his shoulder against the wall. Maybe he could just stay in the stairwell for however long it took until the next train came back, and then pretend he’d gone…

No. Wouldn’t work, he realized numbly, as a sighted soldier escorted the blind man he’d seen on the bench outside up the stairs. She glanced at him oddly as they passed. Waiting on the stairs would be even more conspicuous than just going to the damn camp would be. Swallowing his terror and leaning heavily on the handrail, he slowly trailed after the pair until he reached the platform, just as the train rolled in and came to a groaning stop. In front of him, a pair of armed soldiers checked the blind man and escort’s IDs, comparing photos to faces. Another soldier approached Vulpes. A huge dog in a flak jacket labeled LAPD stood loosely restrained at his side.

“ID?” he asked.

“…No?” Vulpes answered, resisting the urge to reach for a weapon. His eyes flitted between soldier and dog.

The soldier remained completely stoic in his boredom, however. He gestured to a trunk on a cart pushed against the wall.

“I’m going to need all firearms, including ammunition, melee weapons, anything flammable, and items that could be used as improvised weapons, in the bin please, sir.” He said it all in one breath with minimal, carefully scheduled pauses that suggested it was a script he’d memorized and repeated hundreds of times. His eyes were sharp, though, as he watched Vulpes slowly deposit his rifle, the pistol, and all of his ammo into the box.

“Blades too,” the guard cautioned blandly. Vulpes scowled and dropped his knife in. By this time, the other two soldiers had finished with the blind man and were watching the proceedings. “And the crutches,” the soldier added, and at that, Vulpes finally leveled a vicious glare at him. Even the gatekeepers at the Fort weren’t this anal.

“ _I have one leg._ ”

“Really, Powell? Let it go,” remarked one of the watching guards, mirroring a watered down version of Vulpes’ disgust.

“I don’t make the fucking rules,” Powell muttered. “Crutches are on the list of improvised weapons. I’m not gonna get a dishonorable discharge because you guys feel bad for a cripple. He’s walking without ‘em, isn’t he?”

“Watch your fucking mouth. A lot of good people came back from the Dam with disabilities. If he’s carrying the crutches it’s because he needs them. Jesus Christ.”

“Keep talking like that, Powell, and _I_ _’ll_ show you a crutch as an improvised weapon, firsthand,” the third guard said very, very calmly, in a way that reminded Vulpes of the arena fighters in the Fort who always looked half asleep but could gut a man at a moment’s notice. So confident in their own skill and so comfortable in combat that their blood pressure never spiked at the first flash of a knife, and they were never wracked by an adrenaline crash when all was said an done. There was never an adrenaline _rush._ They were like the counterpoint to the berserkers- terrifyingly collected. Vulpes had always envied them, somewhat. He never felt more frightfully alive than during a fight, and never more dead than after one.

There was a moment of tension between the guards. Vulpes stood trapped in the middle, silent and stock-still. Finally, Powell scoffed and shook his head.

“Fine. Whatever. What’s in the mail bag?”

“Mail,” he growled unhelpfully, probably not doing himself any favors.

“Packages? I’ll need to check them.”

Vulpes handed him the whole bag, and watched as Powell rifled through stacks of mail, held some of the fatter envelopes to the light, and finally opened the small, paper wrapped package intended for Lt. Sorenson. It was just a book. Powell almost looked disappointed as he retied the twine holding the wrapping together.

“I’m gonna frisk you and the dog’s going to sniff you for explosives, so if you’ve suddenly remembered any contraband you’re carrying, put it in the box now, because nobody will be happy if I have to take it off you.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Vulpes pulled his box of Med-X from his bag and placed it in with his weapons. He wasn’t sure what counted as contraband here, but he didn’t like how Powell was eying him. If it came to a fight here, he would lose. Soundly. He twitched at the sound of the dog’s claws on the floor.

He looked at Powell, slowly raising his hands to shoulder height, with only a couple wary glances at the other two guards. Powell muttered as he frisked Vulpes, and Vulpes gritted his teeth and tried not to bristle as foreign hands moved over him, and then the dog was walked in a ring around him, snuffling obtrusively, and then it was over. Before Vulpes could process it he was being bustled onto the train by one guard while another rolled his gear into another car. They’d barely stepped inside when the doors slid shut with a pneumatic hiss and the train lurched into motion.

Vulpes swallowed a latin curse as he lost balance, barely catching himself on a handle projecting down from the ceiling.

“First time on the monorail?” his guard asked nonchalantly. It was the one who’d threatened Powell. He wore a lazy, neutral smile like it was part of his uniform.

Vulpes just nodded curtly in response. He felt small and naked without his weapons. He hadn’t walked around without even a knife on him since he was a toddler. He could not figure out, for the life of him, how he’d ended up here.

“It’s never fun,” the guard conceded with a shrug. “But at least it’s short.”

And that was the extent of their conversation, to Vulpes’ great relief. The blind man and his guide stood on the other end of the car and seemed just as uneager to socialize as Vulpes was.

True to the guard’s word, it was only minutes before the monorail came gliding to a halt at McCarran.

“You’ll want to head down the hallway, turn right, and go down the escalator,” the helpful guard said as the doors opened. “There’s a reception desk there. Check in with them.”

The guard didn’t stick around for a thank you, which suited Vulpes fine. He was left to hobble off the platform and through an unassuming door.

It wasn’t quite bustling inside, but there were plenty of people about, and roughly a quarter of them were wearing non-standard armor. Apparently, a lot had changed since he’d received his final report from Picus, months ago. The terminal  looked to have been converted into a sort of receiving center for NCR personnel and visitors alike. Nobody spared him a glance as he slowly limped downstairs. Several desks had been pushed together into a rectangle in the center of the floor, with a dozen men and women in NCR fatigues manning them. A matted rope of power and network cables snaked across the floor from the wall to power the several computers that were set up in the island of desks. The cords were taped down in intervals with rubber mats thrown over them in an attempt to keep people from tripping. The whole area buzzed with activity as people swept in and out, touching base briefly at reception before flitting off again.

Belt barriers hemmed in the foot traffic coming down from the escalators, with the verified NCR personnel exiting through a guarded gap to one side, and the rest being funneled towards the desks. The receptionist at the nearest desk looked up, spotted Vulpes lingering at the perimeter, and waved him in.

“Name?” she asked, immediately plunging him into mild, drugged panic again.

“No,” he refused flatly, throwing caution to the wind purely on Med-X muddled reflex. The receptionist didn’t seem to notice or care. She pulled a small sheet of card stock from a pile on her desk and began filling out the pre-printed blanks.

“Purpose for visit?”

“Delivery,” he answered a little more confidently, hooking a thumb under the strap of his mail bag to draw her attention to it. She blinked at the logo, peered at his face, and then discreetly glanced at something under her desk. A little of the tension eased from her expression.

Making sure he wasn’t _the_ Courier, Vulpes decided numbly. He would bet his other leg there was a picture of him under the desk, tucked where visitors couldn’t notice. Not that it would ever do them any good. Not now that the Courier had abandoned human shape.

“Length of stay?”

He blinked, his attention returning to the woman.

“…As brief as possible.”

“Under one day,” she translated, speaking each word slowly as she wrote it. She glanced up at him over her glasses. “You know where to find who you’re looking for?”

He shook his head, and the receptionist calmly and blandly spent the next few minutes looking up the officer he was looking for in the computer system, pinpointing his office, and giving Vulpes directions. Then, with finality, she took a rubber stamp, pressed it into a pad of red ink, and stamped the card with the NCR seal before shoving it into a plastic holder on a string and handing it to him. In the name field, she’d written “Noah.” He looked up at her, but couldn’t tell if she’d misheard him or if some glimmer of wry humor lurked under her stony expression.

“Wear this at all times. Visitors found not wearing tags will be treated as an active security risk. Return it before you leave. Have a nice day.”

He didn’t waste his time moving toward the exit. Much of the space along the walls seemed to have been commandeered by traders and vendors, either selling basic supplies out of hastily erected stalls or lounging and laughing with each other while they killed time. The laughter made him uneasy; every burst and peal drove him to give a wide berth before he even knew he was doing it. None seemed to be paying him any attention, but the very thought of their eyes following him made him feel filthy.

_This was a massive mistake,_ he thought again as a passing wastelander shoulder checked him, knocking him a step to the side. He glanced warily at the man, who didn’t even seem to notice him, and he slunk away before he could. Such a fool he was! So desperate to escape the Courier he’d walked right into another enemy’s house!

He was still berating himself as he limped outside, onto the airfield. According to the McCarran receptionist, Lieutenant Sorenson was currently working out of an overflow tent set up about halfway down the tarmac. There were fewer non-NCR people out here; on the bright side, the soldiers were experts at ignoring everything that happened around them by now, having had to work out of open tents for years now. However, Vulpes also stood out like a sore thumb. What eyes did settle on him tended to stick for a few seconds. He kept his chin tucked, painfully aware that everyone around him had been staring at those _damned_ propaganda posters on a daily basis.

“Hey! Courier!”

The sudden shout made Vulpes and a dozen other nearby soldiers instinctively duck for cover. Vulpes half-flung himself behind a concrete barrier and reached for a rifle that wasn’t there and nearly swore again, catching himself only at the very last moment. An NCR trooper had also dropped behind the barrier, and crouched a few feet away with her pistol in her hand. The blood had drained from her face; her lips were pressed thin. She glanced at him, appraising, as if wondering how useful he’d be in a skirmish.

“Shit, sorry- false alarm! I’m sorry,” the voice followed up. All around, mildly shell-shocked veterans were hastily covering up their kneejerk panic as they rose from their cover and discreetly holstered weapons. Vulpes pulled himself up along with them, trying to still the tremble in his legs. He was shaking like a green recruit. Disgusting. Shameful.

Trotting hastily over from a nearby tent was a young infantryman, hands raised in front of him in contrition. “Fuck,” he admonished himself, and to Vulpes and all the scowling soldiers he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think, I just wanted to get you to hold up-”

“Never,” the woman soldier who had dropped behind the barrier said, “yell ‘Courier’ in the Mojave again. You’re lucky nobody shot you.” With that, she forcefully holstered her gun and stalked away, shaking her head.

“What do you want,” Vulpes breathed, not quite trusting his voice to be steady enough for anything louder. His hand was clenched tight around the top edge of the barrier, anchoring him. He thought his legs might give out if he didn’t. He felt light-headed, dizzy. _Shouldn_ _’t have come here. Shouldn’t have taken the damned Med-X._

“I- I just wanted to see if you had any mail from back home,” the kid said sheepishly as the rest of the startled troopers also dispersed.

Vulpes continued to stare flatly at the kid for a minute until he felt steady enough to reach for his mail bag. He didn’t break eye contact as he fished through the bundles by touch, finally finding the fattest.

“Normally they get dropped off with Barracks Managem- ah…” He trailed off as Vulpes pointedly held up the bundle of letters for the kid to see, then very deliberately dropped it in the dust between them.

Vulpes didn’t wait to see the young recruit get down in the dirt to pick it up. Instead, he did his best to melt back into the crowd, beelining for the tent where he’d find the Lieutenant.

At last, he was in luck. A lieutenant was half-leaning over a desk that had been dragged out to the tent, tapping a pen restlessly against its surface as he leafed through some notes. A private lingered at his side, impatiently swaying on his feet.

“Yeah, I’m Sorenson,” the officer said when he asked, barely glancing up from the paperwork he was bent over. “Give me a minute. Brigadier General will speak calmly at me if I don’t get this report signed, sealed, and delivered.”

“Brigadier General?” Vulpes asked, perplexed. “The only General at McCarran was Oliver.” Absently, he added, “I watched him go over the dam.”

This got Lt. Sorenson’s attention. Staring at Vulpes, he blindly stamped the papers and shoved them into the private’s hands. The private immediately ran off, leaving the two men alone.

“A mercenary?” The tone in his voice was difficult to identify. It could just have easily been mild disgust as respect. He didn’t seem to hold any real ill will against him, though. Vulpes was getting more than a little irritated. If he’d known it was this easy to pass as a mercenary and gain access to McCarran that way, he’d have had a dozen spies in here years earlier. He nodded at Vulpes’ prosthetic leg. “What got you?”

“…Machete,” he replied, even as he turned slightly to angle his maimed leg away, making it harder to see.

“Ouch.”

Understatement of the century. He could still remember the sound of the ghoul’s blade hacking down through muscle and tendon. He could still remember the blinding, searing pain. Even through the fading effects of the Med-X he could feel the pain of his missing leg. At night, when it was dark, he could still imagine that his foot was still there, curled in on itself in an agonizing cramp.

“The Brigadier General,” he prompted again. It paid to stay informed.

“Yeah. Hsu got promoted after the battle at Hoover Dam, and Colonel Moore got pulled back west. Guess they decided we needed a diplomat to deal with the aftermath of all this shit instead of a warhawk.”

“You can’t negotiate with a _night stalker_ ,” Vulpes blurted, half stunned by the news. Of all the NCR command, Colonel Cassandra Moore had been one of his biggest worries. She reminded him of Lanius. Ruthless, bloodthirsty. Loathe as he was to admit it, however, she would have been much better suited to the task of exterminating the Courier than Hsu with his doves and olive branches.

Sorenson grunted his heartfelt agreement. “Well, tell that to top brass. They have no fucking clue what the Courier is like. Probably never seen a night stalker before, those lucky fucks.” He sighed. “But you didn’t come here to chat. You got a package for me?”

They made the exchange; Sorenson quickly counted out the two hundred caps owed from a sack in the desk’s locked bottom drawer, and Vulpes fished out the receipt for him to sign.

A minute later, Vulpes had caps in hand, and he was slowly hobbling back up the airstrip towards the terminal building. The rattle in his pack was reassuring. It sounded like freedom.

He returned to the terminal with little incident; he passed by the First Recon tent along the way, but Boone wasn’t there, and none of the snipers who were gave him a second glance. He carried on quickly regardless, uneager to give them too many opportunities to compare him to the posters pinned to the canvas walls.

From there, it was just a matter of minutes before he was back on the strip, reunited with his gear and two hundred caps richer. Enough to buy a better gun. Whether or not it could also buy him more time, however, he could only hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This arc is about Vulpes' excellent decision making abilities. Have I mentioned yet that Vulpes is having a Bad Time? :P
> 
> Thank you all for your continued support! I love seeing your kudos and comments so much, it's extremely motivating and really instills confidence in my work. :)


	9. Chapter 9

He didn’t sell the Med-X. Instead, he went to Westside, where he sold the snubnose pistol and bought a battered 9mm and as much ammunition as he could afford at a pawn shop that somehow managed to look more run down than the pre-war ruins surrounding it.

And maybe that was a dumb decision (he knew it was a dumb decision) but gods, he made good time on the chems, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to care enough to stop using them. Caesar was dead, the Legion was dissolved, and his old rulebook was out the window. What did it matter if he used. What did it matter if he was a cripple who refused to die, or if he was a veteran too afraid to turn and fight. He wasn’t really a Legionary anymore- _in spiritus_ only- and the broken spirit had little to say in times like these.

He was tired of being smart. He just wanted to run, even if he wasn’t quite certain he was being chased anymore. Not when the shadows he fired at never bled.

He went east, if only because he knew the Courier was in the west. East, back up the road he’d walked on two feet only weeks before. Then, a greasy column of smoke had risen over the red horizon, marking where the Fort burned. Now, there were only blue skies, and he wasn’t sure which felt more wrong.

“Dam’s closed,” two different travelers told him. One an NCR trooper, one a common scavenger. “Securitrons are still blocking it off.”

But Vulpes had already come this far, traveling two long days, and he wasn’t quite opposed to just dropping into the canyon if he couldn’t cross over it. Barring that, he could just loop north by Lake Mead or south along the canyon. He kept going, past the wreckage of Boulder City, past more and more wastelanders urging him to turn back.

But when he finally arrived at the Dam, he had forgotten why he came, and questioned his own foregone decision not to follow in the footsteps of Lucius’ caravan southward to cross the Colorado near the ruins of Laughlin. All he had to do was turn the corner and see the thicket of NCR soldiers lingering cautiously on the outskirts of the battlefield, watching and waiting in a month-long standoff with the Securitrons parked three deep at the mouth of the Dam’s walkway. The robots looked as if they had never moved from when Vulpes last saw them, the day of the battle. Perhaps they hadn’t.

Most overwhelming was the stench. The bodies on the westward bank had been cleared away, leaving behind only persistent brown-black bloodstains on concrete and craters marking where shells had struck. The bodies on the Dam and beyond it had not- they remained sprawled where he had seen them fall, grotesquely bloated and swarming with insect activity.

_There is Decanus Dead Sea_ , Vulpes thought numbly, spotting his spiked helmet in a tangle of split flesh. _There_ _’s the ranger I stole my duster from. There’s the green Legionary that first followed my charge across the Colorado._ He was greener than ever; his sun-swollen corpse had burst in the heat and was now reducing itself to a gelatinous slime only barely held together by sinew and bone. The air was thick with the sweet-sour odor of death and the millions of flies it attracted. Even for Vulpes, who was long used to the smell of decay, it was nauseating- the stench of a hundred corpses, piled so deep that they putrefied instead of drying out on the white hot concrete. Blackened gore littered the slope of the dam, all the way down to water level. A couple Bighorners were perched on the cliffs far below, gnawing at tough grass and human bone alike.

And all at once, a wound Vulpes had been carefully ignoring tore itself open again, more painful, more crippling than his lost leg had ever been. It felt as though someone had buried a white-hot blade in his back and carved out flesh and bone to leave only a bloodied and hollow mask of himself- human when seen from the right angle, but clearly grotesque in his emptiness upon any further inspection. His culture, his people, his history, all torn away and dead. Despair wrapped around his heart and yanked it, down, down. _The Legion dissolved_ , he thought absently. _The Legion decayed._ An obscene gurgle of laughter erupted from him, and he was having trouble breathing, and it had nothing to do with the pervasive reek of death.

Troopers posted nearby were beginning to take notice. A few stood up from makeshift benches, pointing him out. He could feel the oppressive weight of their attention, and it pressed down on his shoulders, his head, until he was hunched over and fleeing their hungry eyes like a dog that had never gone unkicked. He loped towards the Securitrons blocking the Dam, and the horrible time capsule the Courier had maintained. He had to see. Had to bear witness. More than that, he had to know what happened. He couldn’t bear not knowing.

“This is a restricted area,” one of the Securitrons barked, but stray dogs could bark too.

“Let me in.”

“You are not authorized-”

“Let me in, you dissolute mongrel, I know you’re watching, let me in!” Vulpes hissed, staring daggers into the camera mounted to the robot. It wasn’t that he _wanted_ the Courier to be watching through his robots’ eyes, and he didn’t want to speak with him, but he wasn’t convinced he would leave them entirely to their own devices, either. His need to _see_ outweighed his fear, for the moment.

“Turn back now.”

“Let me in, let me in let me in _letmein_ -”

The Securitron’s face flickered, and was replaced with a lopsided, goofy smile. Vulpes flinched, hand moving automatically for a machete he didn’t have.

“Well, gol-ly! You sure are persistent!”

Vulpes had been slightly stooped before the Securitrons, but this made him hunch over further, taking several hesitant, stumbling steps back.

“What are you?” he growled mistrustfully. “Where is the Courier?”

“I’m Yes Man,” the robot replied cheerfully. “The Courier left me in charge of the New Vegas area while he works on other projects.” A pause, then, “Huh, would you look at that! It looks like the Courier flagged you for VIP clearance! Lucky you!”

“Lucky,” he repeated faintly, face twisting. The robot ignored him.

“I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience! It looks like you have all the clearance you need to cross the Dam.”

Yes Man and the wall of Securitrons silently parted, opening a pathway large enough for only one man. Vulpes didn’t move. He squinted suspiciously at the Securitrons, who loomed before him in ominous silence.

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t ask questions. I’m just like you,” Yes Man said, in a tone of voice that found a way to put Vulpes even more on edge. “I just follow orders.”

Yes Man’s crooked grin was static, but Vulpes stared at it intently, looking for a hint of the smiley face left carved in the wall in Goodsprings. Did the Courier tell the robot about him, or was this the Courier? He was inclined to believe that the Courier had delegated the administration of New Vegas to this computer- he never seemed to have much interest in the power of command or the tedium of running a city- but something in the robot’s cadence felt too familiar. Perhaps, however, it was just the knowledge that there was no soul behind that facade of friendliness that tainted his perception.

“And if I want to come back, you’ll let me,” he asked carefully, still staring.

“Of course,” Yes Man said brightly. “Unless your security status changes.”

It wasn’t quite a yes. The way Yes Man’s smile never changed made his stomach turn.

“What’s the catch? Why do I have clearance, and nobody else?”

“Probably because the Courier likes you. You’re not the only one with clearance. But,” Yes man added in a faux whisper that only lacked a wink and a nudge, “it’s a very short list. He must really trust you.”

“And my clearance won’t change if I pass through?” He wasn’t even sure why he was asking; hadn’t he planned to keep heading east?

“It sure doesn’t seem likely.”

“Can I give you orders? Does my security clearance include that?”

“You could give orders, if you wanted,” Yes Man told him, voice echoing the plastic cheeriness of his face. “But I don’t have to follow them.”

It was worth asking, at least, in case the Courier had overlooked a fatal loophole. Apparently not. He looked past the Securitrons again to the heaped corpses. Pile body upon body… He’d said that once. To the Courier. The words turned to ash in his mouth, now that he saw them realized in the undignified wet decay of his people.

“Why did he block off the Fort?” he found himself asking the robot, voice distant as he continued surveying the carnage. It just didn’t make sense. To guard the underground facility in the Fort would make sense, and guarding the Dam would too, but this strictly?

“He didn’t tell me,” Yes Man chirped, entirely unhelpful.

“And… nobody has been let through until now. I’m the first.”

“That’s right!”

Numb, Vulpes took a hesitant step toward the Dam. The Battle had been, and remained, a performance orchestrated by the Courier. Life, the stage, and death, the final bow- all actors holding their positions for the audience, until the curtain is drawn. Here, corpses, _holding_ , for an audience of one.

He had to see. He was _expected_ to see.

“Let me through,” he commanded faintly, and the gap in the robots that had gradually closed during their conversation widened again, allowing him passage. Behind him, he heard NCR troopers shouting something as they hurried closer, but before they could get too close he had passed the Securitrons, and they closed ranks again, raising their blaster arms to bring the advancing NCR troops to a halt.

And then he was alone, with nothing between him and the Fort except his fallen brothers. His ears rang; he could feel every heartbeat pushing painfully through veins that suddenly seemed too small. Flies made attempt after attempt to cluster around his eyes and mouth, and he anxiously batted them away as he stared down the curved length of the dam.

Then, taking a deep, stuttering breath, he began wading through the bodies. He worked hard not to look down too long; a few times when he slipped or stumbled over rotting corpses, he dropped his gaze and met faces he might have recognized once. The whole while, he breathed through his mouth, filtered under one hand to block out the flies, and fought the urge to throw up.

He met and passed Dead Sea. He had never worked closely with the man and wasn’t very familiar with him, but they’d spoken a few times in the course of their duties. He was grateful that his Decanus helm covered his face.

Time went. He checked out.

After what felt like a year climbing over the dead, pushing through swarms of flies that darkened the air and skirting crumbling craters left by the Boomers’ plane, he reached the other end of the dam, and a few minutes later emerged from the bottleneck of dead bodies. Corpses still littered the ground, but there were bare patches between them now. Weary in both mind and body, he picked an earth embankment relatively free of gore and sat. His entire body was shaking; he thought of the Med-X in his pack, and just as quickly pushed the thought away. He needed to be sharp for this.

He waited on the embankment for several minutes, face pressed into his palms as he took measured breaths, willing himself to calm down. When his legs had stopped trembling enough that he trusted himself to walk again, he shakily pushed himself upright. From there Vulpes was able to pick his way carefully up the slope and into the remains of the Fort itself, a growing dread taking hold in his heart.

He barely recognized it. Most of the structures had been tents; they were all gone, replaced by flurries of greasy black ash. Here and there, charred and broken tent poles stabbed up from the earth like tangles of broken bone. Blackened bodies lay half-buried in the ash and debris, their skin shiny and tight where there was skin at all. Many had been contorted grotesquely by the heat. Some laid straighter; their tendons had given out and snapped like guitar strings, curling back on themselves as the muscles bunched tightly at their insertion points in the flames. There was no way to identify any of them. Vulpes wouldn’t have recognized them anyway. He wasn’t exactly part of regular camp life in those final days, and hadn’t been for years. Crows chatted with each other and marched through the ash, now, from body to body, unworried about his presence.

Vulpes continued climbing the hill, towards the flat peak where Caesar had placed his tent so long ago. All that was left now was a skeleton of burnt wood and metal. It looked like it had taken some targeted damage from the Boomers; all the fabric of the tent had burned away. He knew exactly where the entrance of the tent would have been, though, and where the throne would have sat (just a heap of charcoal now, studded with steel), and behind that, the room where Caesar had died.

Vulpes hesitated at the memory of the threshold. He could see the shape of the medical machine Caesar had ordered dragged in at some point, half buried in ash and debris from the fallen tent and standing like a grim altar to the memory of a god. The machinery itself looked scorched, and its plastic elements melted, as though it had sparked and burned from within. According to the report he’d been given only a few weeks ago, Caesar’s body would be on that sickbed, hidden in the rest of the ruin.

He lingered, still, several feet away. His eyes twitched over the blackened shapes, searching automatically for the familiar dome of a skull, or shaft of a femur. A few birds croaked to each other over the hissing wind. Vulpes worked up the courage to shuffle closer, nearly falling over the debris covering the ground, until he was standing next to the table. He pushed a heap of scorched canvas off, and it took some of the greasy black mess with it, disturbing a cloud of ash when it hit the ground. Vulpes coughed through the gray cloud, mouth pressed into his sleeve as he ran the fingers of his other hand through the soot, searching for anything solid. Lumps of sticky ash adhered to his skin as his fingertips brushed against something smooth, warm, irregular. He prised it free and shook the ash loose.

A vertebra.

He dropped it as he identified it, instantly repulsed. Caesar’s backbone, held in his hand. He was stricken with the mental image of his arm, plunging through Caesar’s chest, rupturing his heart, seizing his spine from within, and his god-king watching with that horrible little smirk of his while he did- another inside joke Vulpes wasn’t privy to.

Vulpes swallowed heavily, consciously slowing his breathing. He turned his back on the table, uneager to keep searching, and then he leaned back against it, his legs too shaky to support him. He pawed the sweat from his brow with his clean hand and held the ashy one away from his body, like it had betrayed him.

It was _a_ vertebra. He couldn’t be sure it was Caesar’s. He needed something more concrete. A skull.

Sucking in a breath, he turned back, and plunged his hand back into the ash, too aware that this was likely all that remained of Caesar’s flesh. He let his hand rake through a lumpy heap at the head of the operating table, and then he dislodged it- an oblong item, concave like a bowl, pale, but stained dark by the fire. Its surface was porous. Its edges were sharp, and very cleanly cut.

His breath caught, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, transferring the item to his other hand and feeling blindly through the debris again for what he knew was there.

Fingers caught on an edge, and then the skull was pulled from the soot, mandible detached. The cap of the skull was also detached. Vulpes fitted the two pieces in his hands together, slotting the dome-like piece over the large hole in the crown of the skull. They matched perfectly.

He set the skull down beside him on the table, couched in a bed of ash. His eyes were dry, but his throat burned, and his chest felt painfully tight.

Caesar was dead.

“I believed in the Legion, you know,” he told the skull hoarsely. “Even after everything it took from me, I saw what it had to give.”

The skull didn’t reply. A breeze stirred a small swirl of ash across the ground.

“I’m not sure-” he started, and stopped, blinking down at his false leg. “I’m not sure now, though. If it was _you_ that gave, or people like me. The ones who worked in the shadows for their ideals. I saw you take. But what did you ever give me?” A pained smile twisted itself across his face and vanished in a flash. “In the tribe I came from,” he murmured, “the most powerful literally gave their lifeblood to those below. Their love, shared by a physical gift of chemmed blood- or that’s how they saw it. I’ve never even seen you _bleed_.” He took a deep breath, willing himself to relax before he tore something. The stress had him taut as a bowstring, joints creaking. “I was one of the most powerful men in your army, and the most loyal, but I was only ever just a slave to you, wasn’t I?”

Weary, he swept the ash away and pulled himself fully onto the table, sitting beside the skull and staring out over the ruined walls to the red cliffs beyond. Above, crows cackled as they wheeled in the hot air.

“Look at us now. The Legion is dissolved, you’re dead, and I’m reduced to _this_. And what do we have to show for it, but ashes and ruin?” He paused, frustrated. “Why didn’t you _trust_ me, Caesar? I warned you time and again, I served you faithfully- I gave you _so much_ of myself, and you never trusted me.”

Restless, he stood again, moving a few paces away before wheeling around again, pointing at the skull with a hand that trembled from nerves and fury alike.

“And what am I supposed to do now? I don’t understand this world! I don’t know how to fit into it! I’m just-! All I _am_ , all I ever _was_ , was a killer and a slave driver, because _you made me this way!_ I could have been anything, anyone, and you made me _this!_ ” On impulse, he reached down to grab a handful of sooty dirt, and he flung it at the skull. It pattered off it harmlessly. “What were you expecting, _Sallow,_ when you decided this was how it should be? Every generation of us, worse than the last! I’ve known boys who made their first kill before they could tie their own boots and cared less about it than they did the weather!”

Several minutes passed, punctuated only by bird calls and the shifting wind. Vulpes returned to the table and sat unmoving, hands clasped tight around the edge, body perfectly still. Finally, he slid back to the ground, wobbling on his feet for a moment. His face darkened fractionally.

“Maybe you really were just a greedy old man,” Vulpes mused without looking back at the skull. “Maybe the Legion’s success was a fluke. It was my job to know things. I know you robbed the Legion’s bones from an ancient people. Maybe you recycled just enough to capitalize on their success. Maybe the good I saw in the Legion wasn’t your doing, but the ghost of something designed thousands of years ago by better men.”

He fell silent, then turned to the skull again, lifting it into his hands, speaking softly.

“Good men died for you, because you wanted to be king. It all seems so foolish now. _I_ feel foolish.”

His chest felt like it had been hollowed out as he slowly traced his own steps back to the Dam, Caesar’s skull in hand. What had been painfully raw before had gone strangely silent and numb; before, he was at the bottom of a pit he couldn’t climb free from. Now, the pit opened beneath him, and he was swallowed by the cold and the dark. Everything he knew was gone. This darkness was all that was left. Like the ringing of ears in abject silence, it was a loud and all-consuming _lack_. This was his life now. This was fine. He was fine. He felt like he might vomit, or scream, or drop to the scorched earth and never get up again, but he was fine.

The nauseous nothing felt like the Med-X had somehow reached his troubled soul. He could work with this.

He was fine.

He descended the dusty slope, back into the thick stench, back into the bodies, back onto the dam. About twenty yards out, he paused to look out over the glittering water below. From this height, it looked as dark and solid as smoked bottle glass. He lifted Caesar’s skull to eye level, shifting his gaze from one hollow eye socket to the other, as if the bone still held the man’s secrets.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked it in a hush, all bitterness. “For once, the joke’s on you.”

Lips curled in a snarl, he wound up, then launched the skull from the dam. The cap came off the skull in the air, and they went clattering down the dam’s wall separately, brittle bone splintering against the concrete. He watched until they faded from sight, and then he watched a while longer, eyes fixed on nothing.

“ _Rex mortuus est,_ ” he finally whispered, words lost to the wind. _“Vivam vulpe.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vulpes is fine! Totally fine!
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and leaving me kudos and comments. You're the best bunch around, and I really appreciate having you here!


	10. Chapter 10

Weeks passed. Then months. He measured it in Med-X.

Before he’d left the Dam, he’s painstakingly climbed the cliffs on the east bank, checking cache after cache, both congratulating himself for thinking ahead and planting supplies before the battle, and cursing himself for making them so hard to reach. Once or twice, he’d nearly fallen into the canyon.

It was worth the effort, though- when he returned westward across the Dam, he was newly outfitted with a machete, his preferred assault rifle, and a lightweight sniper rifle, all in excellent condition. He had ammunition enough for another battle, and supplies that could see him through a couple weeks in the wilderness.

No chems, though. Vulpes had been a good Legionary.

He wouldn’t find more in the east, either. Not after the Legion had cleaned it up. Even if he wanted to live clean, he couldn’t face the dregs of the Legion now. It might bring him crashing back into his body and make him feel things again.

West it was. Hollow dread settled into the comfortable home it had made in his heart, and he countered with slightly increased hits of Med-X, leaving him floating in that disorienting nothingness that had followed him over the Dam. He barely limped- his leg might bleed, but he couldn’t feel it. This was fine.

He was fine.

When he reached the Nevada side of the Dam and shouldered his way through the Securitrons, he found a wall of NCR soldiers waiting with guns pointed, previously hidden from view behind the bulk of Yes Man and its cohort. He had frozen mere feet in front of the robots, staring at the cluster of troops like a wild animal stuck in a trap. He was still covered in ash, and rotten flesh spattered his legs up to the knee.

“Hands up,” the one presumably in charge ordered, tense as a tripwire. Vulpes didn’t raise his hands. Grimacing uncertainly, the soldier made a fleeting hand motion and two more soldiers moved towards Vulpes with cuffs in hand, and he stepped away from them in dull alarm just as the Securitrons raised their cannons and brought everyone to a sudden halt. Vulpes took another half-step back, and the Securitrons moved just enough to open a pocket for him among their number.

“…Stand down,” the leader, a sergeant, said cautiously, and then he tore his eyes away from Vulpes long enough to shoot a concerned glance over his shoulder at their makeshift camp nearby. Returning his attention to Vulpes, he leaned slightly sideways towards the nearest underling. “Go see what’s keeping the captain.” Louder, to Vulpes: “Identify yourself.”

“I’m just a courier,” Vulpes breathed in response, eyes darting. He blinked and licked his lips, and remembered what the soldiers at McCarran had assumed. “I was a mercenary. I lost my leg here. I had- I had to see.”

“How did you get past the Securitrons?”

Vulpes didn’t answer. He glanced uneasily around him at the impassive, monolithic Securitrons, and past them to the far side of the Dam. He just wanted to get away and to be alone. Running with his tail between his legs and taking the long way around to Cottonwood Cove might be easier than finding an opening-

“Well, he’s a courier, right?” a woman toward the back of the group said. She was holding an assault rifle, but it was casually pointed down. “And with the same company as _the_ Courier. Maybe the robots can’t distinguish between them.”

“They have no problem telling me and my twin brother apart at the gates to the Strip,” a third NCR trooper grumbled. The leader of their group’s grimace became more exasperated; his arrest and interrogation was quickly falling apart.

“Well, maybe the Courier is just shitty at coding robots, I don’t fucking know,” the woman said, defending her idea.

“Is he high?” A voice from the rear asked abruptly. “He looks high as fuck.”

“You threw something off the Dam,” the sergeant prompted, desperate. He was still focused on Vulpes, who swayed where he stood, resisting the urge to reach out and brace himself against the steel flank of a Securitron.

“My foot,” he said, continuing the lie. “I knew where I lost it, I… couldn’t leave part of myself to rot here.” Several of the soldiers made faces, but none objected.

“Why did you go into the camp?”

Vulpes stared dumbly.

“…curiosity?”

Just then, the runner returned, panting.

“Captain’s coming!”

“’Bout damn time,” hissed the sergeant, and a mutter rose among the other NCR. They raised their weapons again, to keep up appearances in front of the commanding officer.

“Captain’s here,” a woman’s voice announced coolly from the rear of the group. The soldiers parted and the captain stepped in among them, lips pursed as she looked Vulpes over.

“Who are you, and why are you on my dam?”

“Your dam?” Vulpes asked vacantly, not quite keeping up.

“ _My_ dam,” she asserted.

“He says he was a mercenary and he lost his leg here, and he came back to, uh. I don’t know, get rid of it, I guess?” one soldier offered, bringing her up to speed.

“Why the courier get-up?”

“Says he’s a courier.” The soldier shrugged, and looked stiffly out at nothing, refusing to look at his superior officers. “We think that’s why the Securitrons let him through.”

“Right,” the captain said.

“Pretty sure he’s high as fuck,” repeated the unhelpful voice from the back.

“ _Right._ ” Her hand curled into a fist, and she pressed her first knuckle to her creased forehead as she processed. “Has he actually done anything illegal? Threatened anyone, attacked anyone…?”

“Um,” the sergeant stalled. “Not really- uh no. Ma’am. We caught him off guard, ma’am.”

“You couldn’t have waited until he pulled a gun on you first? Or at least until the goddamn _robots_ weren’t looking?” She half-turned away from Vulpes, to speak more quietly (but still audibly) to the sergeant. “You really think we can just detain somebody who may or may not have _the_ Courier’s blessing without good fucking reason?”

The sergeant looked chastened; he jammed his hands in his belt and examined his boots. The captain sighed heavily, and directed her attention to the fox.

“I can’t keep you. You’re free to go.”

And that had been that. A couple more days on the road, Med-X almost gone, and Vulpes arrived back in the city as high as a kite and as hollow as a drum. Sold his pawn shop weapons for the caps, turned around and bought more chems. Slept in the ruins, perched high in crumbling buildings where he’d be hard to find.

A few times he made the trip back to Primm, checking in with the old man at the Mojave Express, getting paid and picking up the next load of packages. Farkas was happier and more pleasant every time he brought her new shipments, showering him with her thanks, inquiring after his health, and underpaying for deliveries. The one-legged soldier manning the desk at the monorail no longer engaged him in conversation, just said his hellos with a brief, polite smile and waved him through. Through the calming fog of Med-X, Vulpes learned the climate of McCarran and compulsively memorized names that he would repeat fruitlessly to himself later. He had no reason to know them, now, but old habits- and new ones- died hard.

And when the paranoia hit hard, and he began remembering the shimmering shapes that followed him through the desert, he came here. He’d heard about it by chance as he traded caps for chems with his dealer in Westside. After that, it was just a matter of lowering himself down a ladder into the sewers, throwing a few caps to the betting clerks and barkers to keep them off his back, and staking out a place at the railing.

The Thorn.

Everything about it reminded him of the Fort’s arena- animals fighting animals, monsters fighting men. Even the rhetoric was the same; between each fight, a woman with roughly cropped hair and a throaty voice would preach about survival of the fittest, and how, through combat, blood would be proven, and the race improved. The crowd ate her words up. They were motley, a mix of all genders and ages. Fiends mingled with traders and Kings; old prospectors tried unsuccessfully to chat up the saucy young townies who had snuck off the Strip to have an adventure away from Mother and Father. No matter who they were, they all paid homage to Red Lucy. This was their temple, and she was their priestess, leading them over and over through the same ceremony.

The sacrifices are announced. The cages are opened. Something, or someone, dies.

The familiarity was what initially drew Vulpes to the Thorn. What kept him there, however, leaning over the railing and peering hawkishly down into the pit below, were the night stalkers.

Red Lucy bred them, he learned, and they were a crowd favorite. As much as the people loved seeing two deathclaws tear each other apart, there was something special about an opponent who could not be seen. A certain level of suspense, and the crowd’s near-orgasmic release as the camouflage dropped and teeth sank into flesh.

He was less interested in the fight, and more interested in the stealth. Every time a night stalker fight was announced, he leaned forward, tuning out the riotous noise and the elbows jammed against his, and he focused on the blurred movement in the dim light below. If he could just memorize what it looked like and train himself to spot it, he could be more confident in the field, knowing the shapes that he saw were just tricks of the light and nothing more.

An elbow jabbed sharply into his arm and he was torn out of his trance, just at the cages were about to open on a night stalker v. human match. He narrowed his eyes and bit back a growl, trying to focus on the impending fight again.

The elbow came again. At the same time, Red Lucy bellowed out for the fight to begin.

Irritated, Vulpes looked up from the cages to the man next to him. He was husky; not hugely bulky, and not fat, but nowhere near as slight as Vulpes. He’d shoved in next to Vulpes, standing at an awkward angle to fit. His eyes shone with a malice that was all too common in this refurbished sewer. Beside him, a woman in a glittering red gown with the pale sun-starved skin of a Vegas resident waited impatiently, one hand on her hip. Both were staring at him. Behind them both, more men lingered. They were drinking and only half paying attention; probably not hired muscle, then, but friends, maybe, or colleagues.

“My lady friend wants a view,” the man rumbled.

Vulpes looked at him flatly for a second, glanced to the woman, and disregarded both to turn back to the action. The crowd was waiting in a relative hush; the night stalkers were still unseen, and the man fighting them was slowly edging along the wall.

“Take a fucking hint, cripple,” the man interrupted again, this time laying an unfriendly hand on Vulpes’ shoulder. “ _Walk on._ ” His other hand moved pointedly to his hip to rest on the mother-of-pearl grip of a .44 Magnum.

“Remove your hand,” Vulped cautioned, just loud enough to be heard, “or I’ll remove it for you.”

“A crip like you?” The man laughed, even as Vulpes twitched. _Cripple_. He hated the word. He hated people looking at him and thinking it. The man shoved Vulpes roughly, knocking him sideways into the spectator next to him. “What the fuck you gonna do about it?”

“ _Don_ _’t call me that._ ” Vulpes had recovered neatly, still holding his ground at the railing. The people around him were still restive and quiet as they stared down at the match; nothing had happened yet. The tension was growing in Vulpes, too. He felt his nerves pulling tight, straining to snap.

“It’s what you are, _cripple_ ,” the stranger goaded, and that was enough to push him past his breaking point. Faster than anyone could react, Vulpes reached out, seized a fistful of the man’s hair, and wrenched him down face first into the railing. It rang with the impact, and the nearby observers turned away from the planned match to watch the more interesting one that was developing. A couple of the quicker clerks spitballed odds between each other, and began calling them out: odds of Vulpes’ quick defeat, of stalemate, of divine intervention. Caps bundled with hastily written bets poured in within seconds.

The woman in the red dress let out an indignant shriek, even as the stocky man hauled himself to his feet again. The skin was split over his left eye, streaming blood down one side of his face. His teeth were bared with rage. Without any real tactics, he clenched his huge fist and swung a brutal haymaker towards Vulpes.

A year ago he could have dodged it; the best he could manage now was to avoid a direct hit to the face. The fist grazed the edge of his jaw and caught him in the shoulder, knocking him momentarily off balance as sharp pain blossomed over the bony points. He hissed and ducked sideways as a second punch was thrown, this time more calculated as the brute came to his senses.

Not great, Vulpes mused numbly as he fumbled another dodge, this time taking a hit to his ribs that was fortunately softened by his armor. He was still riding a high, even if it was fading. He wasn’t at the top of his game. On top of that, he was traveling light; all his heavier weaponry was locked up in an old forgotten Mojave Express box near the building he squatted in. All he had on him was his knife, his machete, and his pistol. Normally this would be ideal, giving him more maneuverability, but the way his hands were shaking with nerves and adrenaline, he wasn’t sure he could get a knife into his opponent, let alone a bullet.

Despite it all, his worse-than-average was still better than a lot of people’s bests, and a lifetime of training had been so deeply ingrained in him he could act without thinking. While the brute was close, he snaked a hand out to grab him by his belt, getting inside his range and throwing him off guard. He shifted forward, slamming the point of his elbow viciously into the man’s side, eliciting a pained grunt. The man’s friends were paying attention now; mild intrigue was being replaced by indignation. The woman had removed herself from the picture entirely.

The crowd exploded; the fight against the night stalkers was taking off, too. While he was distracted by the cheering, the brute spun to face him. One hand was pressed to his elbowed kidney. The other caught Vulpes’ wrist in a painfully tight grip, and wrenched his arm back. Vulpes stumbled, nearly falling. He saw the man above him smile through the blood.

Screw etiquette. He was trained to win, not to fight fair.

He planted a knee in the man’s groin. The hand instantly vanished from his wrist, and he took the opportunity to put some space between them while his opponent was busy clutching at his genitals.

That was when the man’s friends entered the fight. Vulpes had been the first to breach unspoken protocol, and now it was a free for all. The fox scrambled backwards towards the railing as two men came lumbering at him, searching for any way out. His back hit the rail and he glanced down, catching a glimpse of the fighter below fending off one night stalker while another was bounding at him.

Above, Vulpes faced the same, but he had the benefit of the terrain. Urging his addled, fuzzy brain to work as fast and hard as it could, he dropped into a squat as the first man reached him, caught him around the waist, and flung him over his shoulder, over the railing. A second later, there was a thump and a yelp as he apparently hit both a night stalker and the floor below, eliciting a roar of surprise and delight from the spectators. There was still another man rushing Vulpes, though, and the brute himself had mostly recovered from the blow to his ego and his nether regions.

The second grunt had learned from the first’s mistakes; he kept as low to the ground as Vulpes, and when he did reach out, it was to sink a fist into his stomach. Pinned against the rail as he was with no time to react, there was nothing Vulpes could do but half-block the punch and grit his teeth through the pain that stabbed through the fading haze of Med-X like a hot poker. Another fist crashed into his jaw, dazing him for the briefest moment and dropping him to the floor, but he was still _angry_. He lashed out with his prosthetic leg, landing an excruciatingly pointed jab in the man’s inner thigh, too near the groin. The man fell to one knee with a grunt, and Vulpes kicked again at his face, and again, busting a cheekbone, and then a direct hit to his left eye, drawing a sharp “ _oh!_ ” of sympathy from the nearby betters. The man screamed wordlessly, turning heads from across the Thorn. The commentary on the official match wavered for a moment as Red Lucy’s attention shifted their way, but then time passed again, and both the match and the fight went on. The grunt tipped forward, forehead nearly to the ground as he pressed his hands to his face and wailed. Vulpes was panting himself; there was blood in his mouth from a cut where his cheek had split over his teeth, and he kept spitting it out as he used the railing to pull himself upright.

All that was left was the brute, now. Vulpes limped away from the railing as he watched the man wiping blood from his eyes, smearing his face red. He pointed silently at Vulpes.

 _Coming for you_ , his glare said. The crowd was so loud around them, anything he said aloud would just get lost in the noise.

Vulpes didn’t reply to the gesture, just wiped his chin on the back of his wrist and tried not to sway too much where he stood. He was watching the man with wide, unblinking eyes, soaking in every detail while he still had the focus. The energy was quickly draining out of him; his legs were beginning to shake, and aches and pains were starting to manifest all over his body. His shoulder and lower ribs on one side throbbed under the sharper pain that still lanced through his jaw.

He spat a gob of blood on the floor, and went on the offensive once again. The word _cripple_ still rang in his ears and burned under his skin, making his hands itch to wrap around a neck and squeeze. He had to get there first, though; the other man wisely half crouched as he lurched at him like a feral, diseased animal. When Vulpes collided with him, all fists and bared teeth and stabbing elbows, he was ready, and returned the fight in kind. They fell together, and the fight was reduced to a slow, ugly scuffle on the ground; the man briefly got a painful hold of Vulpes’ ear before the fox sank his teeth into his arm, drawing blood and tearing away a chunk of flesh when the brute flinched and jerked his hand back. A few more punches barreled awkwardly into Vulpes’ side and hip. They shifted far enough that they ran into a support column, solid concrete, and the pair struggled to get the other pinned against it.

Vulpes won. He got the man between himself and the pillar, and bashed him in the face with his elbow, past relying on the strength of his punches. He felt cartilage give in a crunch that echoed in his own bones. Rage took over; the dazed man barely reacted as Vulpes swung a punch, and another, and another, systematically reducing his face to a mess of blood. The man wheezed and eventually slapped his arm away, but he had stopped fighting back. Panting, Vulpes let his fist droop, and he stood. The brute slowly dragged himself upright several seconds later, using the pillar for support as he blinked, stupefied, out at the crowd.

Somehow, he hadn’t learned his message. His face, already swollen and discolored, twisted with rage, and the brute weakly lifted a fist. Vulpes closed in again to seize the man by the throat and force him roughly into the pillar, simultaneously ripping the ostentatious revolver from the man’s gun belt.

“Don’t! Look! At me!” Vulpes hissed, pistol whipping him to punctuate. Blood flew off the pearl grip of the gun to fleck onlookers standing too close. After the last blow, he kept his grip firm around his neck, holding him against the concrete. His other hand pressed the muzzle of the man’s .44 pointedly against his thigh. “Don’t look at me, don’t touch me, don’t speak to me. I don’t exist to you.”

His face dazed and dripping blood, snot, and tears, the man gave a nod, abbreviated by the fingers pressed under his jaw. His eyes flitted back to Vulpes’ face; Vulpes tightened his grip on the man’s throat and slammed his head back against the pillar. His skull hit the concrete with a sick thud; the betting crowd winced as a unit.

“Don’t look at me,” Vulpes repeated quietly, his face still very close to the brute’s, watching in anticipation for another slip-up, _daring_ him, and making it very hard for him to comply. He leaned with every turn of his enemy’s head, remaining in the center of his sightlines, if only he would look up again and give him the excuse to draw more blood. The brute’s breath was shaky; his gaze fluttered around the floor, and to the side, but stayed carefully away from the fox. After a second, he squeezed his eyes shut- safer that way.

Vulpes held on a few seconds longer before he silently released the man to take a few steps back, still watching, and still holding the bloody revolver. The man’s friends flocked around him with only fleeting glances toward Vulpes, cast somewhere near his feet.

The crowd around them had come back to life by then, clustering around the clerks with outstretched hands or cursing their lack of foresight, but the eyes still rested on Vulpes.

Some of them, anyway. When Vulpes finally turned around, several young men scattered through the mob flinched and turned on the spot, their hunched backs turned to him. Under the chorus of complaints about the unfair odds, and the sporadic cackles from those who’d bet on the cripple, he heard the few terrified whispers.

“ _-est eo-_ _”_

“-the fox-”

“ _Et vulpes vitae!_ _”_

“Don’t look at him, don’t-!”

“-killed Lanius, he’ll-”

“-don’t!”

Vulpes stood motionless, head cocked as he observed, nonplussed and dumb. Legion deserters. A _lot_ of Legion deserters.

Deserters, or survivors?

Didn’t matter. Legion was dead. Caesar was dead.

They all had their backs turned to him, and as he watched, a few tried to sneak furtive glances over their shoulders only to startle again when they noticed him watching and snap back into position, looking very intently in the opposite direction. The ladder rang like a bell over the mingled voices as a few panicked Legionaries fled to surface, feet pounding against the rungs.

Interesting, if nothing else. A strange emotion he couldn’t name made his stomach give a single unpleasant lurch.

He was dragged back into awareness at the sudden sound of caps changing hands again, though, rattling all around him. Bets being silently placed, hungry eyes watching him, watching something behind him. Quickly, he turned again to face the brute, who was standing on his own again, and was _pissed_ , silently rushing Vulpes-

Vulpes took aim and fired. The single shot exploded from the .44 and tore easily through the brute’s leg, dropping him, before embedding in the pillar with a thud and puff of dust and debris. Several people in the crowd screamed as countless more dropped low to the ground, paranoid of stray gunfire and ricochet. One round was enough, though. The brute wouldn’t be getting up from this. If he was lucky, and his friends cared enough, he’d be hauled out of this hole and patched up enough to survive.

Vulpes had been aiming for center mass, but there was a justice here he could appreciate in spite of his deficiencies. It was a hollow satisfaction, though- a joyless smile, a humorless laugh. Just the shadow of the real thing.

He ignored the numbness that settled over him to limp back to the railing and look down on the match. It was over, as quickly as his own. The bloodied corpses of night stalkers were being dragged from the arena by Thorn employees; as he watched, the fighter who’d slain them looked up from wiping his bowie knife clean on the dead grunt’s shirt to stare back at him over the bandana that covered his face.

Strangely shaken by the attention, Vulpes backed away from the rail, looking to his fallen enemy for a second, and then to the exit. He’d overstayed his welcome; it was time to leave. Keeping his head down, he slipped through the spectators towards the ladder up and out, only to find himself escorted silently by one of the barkers, and met at the ladder by Red Lucy herself. She held up her hand, halting him. One of the animal handlers, still bloody from cleaning up the night stalkers, had appeared on Vulpes’ other side, ready to handle _him_ if push came to shove.

“I can appreciate your combat prowess, stranger,” she started, her voice as deep and cool as a river. “People like you are the life and soul of the Thorn. Fighters, and survivors. But,” she continued, “I don’t condone fighting outside the ring. Here, we are all brothers and sisters of the wastes, come to quench the Thorn’s thirst and savor the carnage. You want to draw blood, you go down in the pit.” There was a pregnant pause as they stared at each other. It seemed pointless to argue that the other man had started it. Vulpes had finished it. Vulpes had to deal with the aftermath. “You’re welcome back,” she said, “but now, you must leave.”

Her part said, Red Lucy turned on her heel to return to her pulpit and oversee the next match. Under the watch of the Thorn’s employees, Vulpes hauled himself back up the ladder, and out into the cool night air, where he quickly melted into the shadows.

* * *

He saw it prudent to leave town after the incident, staying just long enough to sell the .44 Magnum and buy its worth in chems. The fight had had… unexpected consequences.

His opponent, he learned from the merchant he sold the gun to, was a fairly well known caravan guard, and he had a temper. He was also attached to his gun. He’d named it- Berta, or Betty, or something like that. He would want it back.

Vulpes also found that, wherever he went, young men on the street wheeled around at the sight of him, vanishing down alleys and into shops just to put walls between them. It looked like he wasn’t the only ex-Legionary to be adapting to a new life. Not by a long shot; it seemed these young men were everywhere, and countless in number. Most of them lingered in the relative obscurity of Westside, but he noticed more than a few in Freeside as well. And they _all_ noticed him. The Fox, the Cripple Who Walked.

Perhaps they weren’t an army anymore, but clearly, they _talked_. That was never good news for a spy.

So he left, limping away to Primm, where he laid low for a couple days in an abandoned house, sorting idly through the mail he had to deliver, prioritizing by how many caps he’d get and hating himself for knowing what that would translate to in Med-X.

He loathed himself a little more every time he shot up, but the alternative was to be a cripple. Too broken to walk, and too broken to cope.

And as an added bonus, when he was high, his hallucinations of night stalkers bothered him a lot less. He saw them everywhere on the road; they followed him from a distance, never coming close. Sober, or as close to sober as he came these days, it was enough to keep him up at night. On Med-X, he could dismiss them.

Packages in hand, he returned to Vegas. It was all the usual recipients: the Followers, McCarran, high rollers at a couple casinos, and some residents in and around Freeside. First things first, though- restock on Med-X.

His dealer was in his usual spot when Vulpes came loping into Westside, leaning quietly in the doorway of an empty building. When he saw Vulpes, though, he frowned and vanished inside.

Vulpes hesitated on the street. He knew his dealer by now- maybe a Fiend in his past life, maybe not, but these days he was calm and straight forward. He didn’t chat with his customers, and he didn’t sample the wares. Most of all, he was unflappable. Junkies had gutted each other on his street corner, and he reacted by lighting a fresh cigarette and settling in to watch. He wasn’t the type to shirk his customers.

Slowly, Vulpes approached the building. Standing in the doorway, he could see his dealer outlined by the light of a small campfire inside, repeatedly striking his lighter and cursing quietly as he failed to get a flame. Sensing eyes on him, he looked back at Vulpes. There was something uncharacteristically flighty in his expression.

“The usual,” Vulpes requested, lifting up a small bag of caps.

The dealer said nothing for a long time, just continued trying to light his cigarette. Eventually he gave up and shoved the cigarette back into the pack with some force.

“No can do. ‘Pologies.”

“I’m good for it.” He rolled the bag in his hands and let the caps make a little noise.

“I know you are. I got no product for you, though. ‘Pologies,” he repeated firmly. “Try somewhere else.”

Vulpes didn’t say anything. He still stood in the doorway, a dark shadow on the threshold. The dealer held his gaze, sweating, but uncowed.

Strange. Felt wrong.

He wanted nothing to do with it.

He left.

As he trailed back to his usual crash pad, he shuffled up his priorities. The Old Mormon Fort was now his first destination, come morning. With luck, he’d be able to get Med-X in payment rather than caps. The Followers were always short on caps, anyway; they might leap on the opportunity.

* * *

They didn’t.

It was business as usual when Vulpes limped through the gates, hunting for a fauxhawk in the crowd. Instead, he saw a neatly groomed blonde head, and he immediately stepped into the nearest tent. Arcade Gannon, the Courier’s pet medic. He was back.

Inside the tent with him was an old lady bundled up on a cot, and a middle-aged woman with two young children sitting at her side. All four of them stared blankly at Vulpes. He stared back for a moment before poking his head outside the tent, looking for Gannon again. Yes, there- talking to another man in a lab coat, arguing over a chart. They’d met each other, once; it had been quite a while earlier, but he couldn’t count on Gannon not recognizing-

“I’m sorry, _who_ are you?” The younger woman asked, her hands on her children’s shoulders. They were still staring wide-eyed up at him. Vulpes glanced among them, looked out at Gannon, and slipped out of the tent, weaving quickly away from the man, peering into tent after tent as he walked.

“Oh!” a familiar voice called, catching his attention. Farkas waved him over from a table set up next to a tent, just as a pair of her underlings were leaving. “It’s you! Uh- you know, I don’t think I’ve ever asked your name-”

“Delivery,” Vulpes said simply, fishing a few parcels from his mail bag and setting them on her table. She stood, taking the packages in hand, looking gratefully between them and him. He turned his face away, still unused to the unaffected warmth.

“This’ll be the antibiotics,” Farkas said as she picked apart the knotted twine holding one box shut to peek at its contents. “This will help a lot of people. Since the NCR pulled back their support, conditions on the farms have gotten a lot worse.” As usual, gratitude turned to guilt, and she kicked a foot in the dirt. “How much do we owe you this time?”

“Comp me in Med-X and consider it even,” suggested the fox, still preoccupied with Gannon’s location in the Old Mormon Fort. He couldn’t see him anymore among the other milling doctors and patients.

Aware that Farkas hadn’t responded, he looked back at her. She was squinting at him, both suspicious and weary.

“You know how low on supplies we are,” she said slowly, but the way her eyes slid to Vulpes’ arms looking for track marks said something else entirely. He crossed his arms as she did. She frowned. “If… If you need help, rehab, if you need to get-”

“Don’t,” Vulpes breathed, squeezing his eyes shut for a brief second before resuming his watch for Gannon. “Please.”

There was a moment of tense silence between them. Vulpes watched as Gannon reappeared, walked twenty feet, disappeared again. Farkas watched him, concern written all over her.

“I can give you a hundred caps, maybe a hundred twenty,” Farkas said at last, shaking her head.

Gannon’s blonde head emerged from under a tent flap, and he began heading towards Farkas’ table.

“Keep your caps,” Vulpes muttered hurriedly, closing his mail bag and shifting away towards the gates.

“Wait,” Farkas called after him, stretching out an arm and trailing after him a few paces. “I’m sorry if I- are you going to come back?”

But he was already at the gate, and uneager to be recognized. He slipped out and mentally berated himself as he made his way to the Atomic Wrangler. He needed to be more careful. He had enemies everywhere, he needed to keep his head down. But he also _needed Med-X._

He paused outside the doors to suck in a steeling breath, and then stepped inside.

It was exactly as he remembered it. Dim, musty, and filled with more smoke than drunks and-

Oh. That was new. Vulpes blinked in confusion and then dawning disgust as a Protectron trundled awkwardly through the bar, weaving between patrons as it blared offers of sexual servitude. He gave it as wide a berth as he could as he made his way to the bar, where James served the odd few men in the mood for day drinking.

He insinuated himself at the bar, a quiet presence that made James start when he finally turned and saw him.

“Jesus, fuck!” he exclaimed in a hush, wheeling on the spot several times to double-take, triple-take. “You’re like, a fucking bad dream come to life. What do you want _now_? I don’t owe you anything.”

“I’m here on business,” Vulpes said, so quiet that James had to lean in to hear him over the hum of conversation and clinking bottles.

“Oh, _business_ , is it?” a grating voice asked, and Vulpes clenched his jaw on reflex as Beatrix sidled up next to him. She tipped her hat with a sneering smile. “You look like shit, cowboy. Come for some loving ministrations?”

“I would sooner die.”

“Prude,” the ghoul accused, her mean grin growing wider as Vulpes’ fingers drummed restlessly at the bar top. “He doesn’t like Fisto, either, James. Gave it nasty looks coming in. You should be offended.”

The barman flushed red faster than Vulpes thought possible, choking on air and ducking his face into his elbow to mask it.

“Maybe,” Beatrix continued, leaning the corner of her jaw in her palm, angling herself towards Vulpes even as he angled further away, “Old Ben is more his speed.” Her filmy eyes rolled over him, leaving him feeling filthy, but then she sighed. “I’ve gotten more rise out of a dead man’s dick. You’re just a big barrel of disappointment.”

“You’re obviously not here for the- entertainment,” James said with some struggle. “What do you want?”

“Med-X, baby,” Beatrix offered flatly as she shoved off from the bar. She reached out to pinch Vulpes’ cheek, but he batted her hand away with disgust. “Look at those bright eyes. Our boy’s _hooked_.”

Then, she slipped away, smacking a few asses as she went. Her laughter rose in a sharp cackle above the baseline of noise as she mingled with more willing company.

“Thirty-five caps a hit,” James muttered, leaning towards Vulpes over the bar and not quite looking at him, “with a ten dose limit.”

“That’s nearly twice market value,” Vulpes argued.

“It’s market value, in this market. _You_ came to _me_ ,” the bartender found the guts to remind him, “and you know where the door is.”

Vulpes deliberated in silence for a moment, then gave a curt nod and pulled a bag of caps from his pack.

“That’s two hundred and thirty,” he said, doing quick math in his head. “Give me seven, or six with twenty caps back.”

“Six and a beer,” James counter-offered, though he didn’t look as though he wanted Vulpes lingering. The patrons around him were slowly shuffling away; he smelled strongly of antiseptic and blood thanks to the constant open wounds under his prothesis’ straps. It wasn’t as noticeable in the open air, or in a medical clinic where _everything_ smelled like antiseptic and blood, but in these close quarters it was nearly overwhelming after a minute or two.

“Seven, or six and twenty caps change.”

“Just give him the shit so he’ll leave,” Beatrix interjected as she swept back in for a whiskey. “Wet fucking blanket…” And then she was gone again.

James sighed, peered at his sister across the room to make sure she wasn’t watching, then reached under the bar. He came back up with six vials which he shoved across the bar to Vulpes, taking his caps with the other hand.

“Twenty caps,” Vulpes repeated, stowing the Med-X away, even as James was opening the bag and counting the caps out. They clinked as he flicked them from one heap to another, counting under his breath. When all was said and done, he pulled out twenty, slid them to Vulpes, and returned the rest to the bag, which he quickly moved out of sight.

Too expensive, Vulpes thought morosely as he left the Atomic Wrangler. It wasn’t sustainable. He needed sus-

His eyes fell on the Lucky 38, peering over the wall of rubble that separated Freeside from the Strip. The doors were still guarded by Securitrons, but the Securitrons at the Dam had let Vulpes through. Vulpes was flagged for VIP clearance.

And the Courier, Vulpes knew, was a hoarder. Always had been- he was instantly recognizable for the huge amounts of salvage he hauled across the wastes when he found a new building to plunder, and for the massive volume of trade he engaged in. Perhaps his pack rat tendencies extended to chems, as well. And if nothing else, there would probably be _something_ left behind in that building that could be sold for a good amount of caps…

Worth a shot, Vulpes decided grimly, setting off for the security checkpoint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He can quit any time he wants, guys, honest!
> 
> Once again, thank you all for your continued support. Your comments and kudos mean so much to me. You're a great crowd :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we kick this chapter off, may I direct your attention to this INCREDIBLE fanart by [thedeadhorse](https://thedeadhorse.tumblr.com)/[redlark_art](https://www.instagram.com/redlark_art/)????????? Such an amazing gift! Go follow them and tell them how wonderful they are!
> 
>  

“Oh! It’s you again!”

Vulpes was face to face with that lopsided grin again, this time in the shadow of the Lucky 38.

“I want into the casino,” he told the robot gruffly from several feet away, uneasy with how it loomed over him.

“Lots of people do!” The grin didn’t falter. Vulpes couldn’t tell if Yes Man was being intentionally difficult, or if it had a sadistic streak and enjoyed watching Vulpes squirm. He hoped it was the former; the latter would suggest that it really was the Courier behind that smile, watching through the camera.

“Does my clearance allow that?”

“Hm,” Yes Man pondered dramatically. “With your clearance, you can access the casino floor and the Presidential Suite.” The robot’s posture changed minutely. “I don’t think the Courier thought to restrict access to the Lucky 38 when he rewrote the security code. Lucky you!”

“Lucky me,” Vulpes agreed, almost sincere this time. He skirted around Yes Man to approach the doors; he heard the heavy clunk of bolts being mechanically disengaged, and when he tried the front door, it opened smoothly. He heard it lock again when it swung closed behind him, leaving him in the dusty, once-sumptuous dark interior of the casino.

The place was pristine, clearly untouched by the Courier. A thick coat of dust rested on every flat surface. Chips, pre-war cash, and smokes lay abandoned at slot machines and blackjack tables. It felt as though everyone had simply set down what they were doing and walked out of the building, leaving only the idle Securitrons to maintain their vigil.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled unpleasantly; he pressed onward to the elevator that dominated the center of the room. As he moved, Yes Man’s face flitted from one robot to another.

“Going up,” the one nearest said as he stepped into the elevator. When the doors slid closed, the elevator car moved on its own, without pressing any buttons. When it came to a halt a minute later, it opened on another dark foyer. “Presidential Suite,” Yes Man announced from yet another Securitron.

Unlike the casino floor, the suite was _ransacked_. It looked like there had been a massive flurry of activity here; glassware and ceramic lay shattered on the plush carpeting. Random shells and munitions were scattered throughout the suite, as though they’d fallen from overburdened arms. Moving inward to the master bedroom, he found a heap of weapons- most of them rusted, broken, or just plain cheap- cast into a corner. A few better ones were thrown across the rumpled covers of the bed. The desk beside the door was stacked high with ammunition crates and a cardboard box full of scrap electronics. Mostly, though, Vulpes noticed the _lack_ of things. Drawers wrenched free from dressers and cleaned completely out. A wardrobe, standing open and empty. The ammunition crates, also empty.

“Did the Courier do this?” he called back to Yes Man, his voice strangely muted in the darkness, in the dust.

“You don’t have clearance to request building access records.”

He continued picking around the room, searching the desk drawers and boxes and wondering where the Courier would keep his chems. Giving up on that room, he went and searched the others with no luck. They were in just as messy condition as the bedroom had been.

He returned to the bedroom to look through the weapons. He suspected that whoever had ransacked the place had tossed aside the weapons they did because they judged them not worth hauling off to sell. In that, he agreed; most of them were bulkier, and clearly defective. Some were missing parts, and random parts were scattered in. The sawn off barrels of a shotgun. A broken scope. A rifle butt, with no rifle. Worthless.

The weapons left on the bed were in better shape, but they were bulky too, and he wasn’t sure who would buy them. There was a minigun; maybe the Gun Runners would be interested, but he’d have to get it to them first- a hard enough task with two working feet. There were a few energy weapons, but few people in the waste used those.

He sighed as he sorted. These wouldn’t be worth taking, either. They were serviceable enough, but nothing he would use, and nothing he could easily sell. Growing desperate and increasingly uncomfortable picking over the Courier’s toys in the Courier’s home base, he returned to the desk to sort through the boxes. If nothing else, maybe he could find some valuable scrap that Mick and Ralph would be interested in.

At first, his prospects didn’t look good. Wads of tangled wire were thrown in with hammered steel plates and unidentified dials and knobs. A lot of it looked like the remains of a busted up radio. After he sorted through all that, though, he hit something towards the bottom of the box and froze. It was unmistakable. His eyebrows knit together in consternation as he pulled a PipBoy from the box.

“How many of these did you have?” he wondered aloud, fumbling with it in his hands as he thought of the two that the Courier had bestowed upon him and Boone for their journey to the Divide. This one wasn’t one of those; it looked more used, with a few noticeable dents and a crack across the corner of the screen. As he activated the screen and scrolled awkwardly through the notes and recordings and inventory lists, he realized with dawning horror that this could only be the Courier’s personal PipBoy. Reading the inane little notes left behind (remember to pick up this item from this person, remember to go there and do that, remember to go to the fort and kill a dog for its brain) he could hear the Courier’s voice in his head.

He _definitely_ never intended this to fall into someone else’s hands. He probably hadn’t intended to leave it behind; maybe the Battle began a little sooner than he anticipated, or it slipped his mind entirely as he remotely piloted his human body from miles and miles away. Slipping the PipBoy onto his arm felt like a small victory. The Courier kept his trophies- guns and bobbleheads and snowglobes and people- and now Vulpes had one of his own.

* * *

Low on caps and high on chems, Vulpes made his way back to McCarran. It was all rote by then; he left the bulk of his gear behind in the safety of a locked drop box, hitched his mail bag further up a drooping shoulder, and boarded the monorail.

At the reception desk, the same bored woman looked at him, looked at his leg, and wrote “NOAH” in block print on a name tag for him. He didn’t thank her when he took it, which was just as well, since she didn’t spare him a second glance once it was out of her hands.

He had another two packages for Sorenson. His deliveries to McCarran always seemed to be for Sorenson; the man either had very loving family west of Death Valley or he had a serious addiction to old world literature- all the packages were books, bundled up in paper and twine. They were all addressed from the same courier service on the east end of the NCR’s inhabited lands. The amount he was spending to receive these packages would have bankrupted the average soldier. A lot of the greener recruits waffled over sending a mere letter, let alone paying for bimonthly shipments of moldering old paperbacks.

Vulpes never asked what they were for. He didn’t care. Or, rather, he might have been vaguely interested, but with no real use for the information, it seemed pointless to seek it out. Their main appeal to him was the sheer number of caps they netted him every time he dropped them off in the Lieutenant’s tent.

This delivery was no different. Lt. Sorenson was at his desk in the shade of his tent when Vulpes loped that way. He was bent over one of last month’s books with a stub of pencil, scrawling something in unreadable chickenscratch in the margins. A lit cigarette bounced and bobbed in the corner of his mouth as his lips twitched in time with the words he wrote. He looked up when he saw Vulpes from the corner of his eye, and closed the book over his thumb to hold his place while also preventing prying eyes from seeing.

Interesting. Useless. He’d have literally killed to know what Sorenson’s book obsession was all about a year ago. Now, he just wanted to be paid.

“Good to see you,” Sorenson drawled around his cigarette. He shoved his pencil in the book where his thumb had been and pushed it off to the side. “You got something for me? Ah, good.”

Vulpes handed him the new books and the receipts to sign, and Sorenson unlocked his desk to fish out the caps he owed, and that was almost it until the lieutenant’s face took on an oddly sly smile and he held up a finger for Vulpes to wait.

“How would you feel about taking on the easiest delivery of your career before you leave McCarran?” He opened a different desk drawer, tossed his book inside, and pulled out a sealed brown envelope. “There’s twenty caps in it for you if you drop this off in Hsu’s office on your way out of the base.”

Vulpes frowned faintly at the envelope, then at Sorenson, uncertain he’d heard correctly. Did they know? Was this a trap? He was high enough that the flutter of nerves was suppressed, but he still felt that stretched, tangled anxiety deep in his gut.

“You want me… to take the envelope to the Brigadier General,” he repeated. Sorenson caught his doubt, and misinterpreted it.

“Yeah, I know, it’s lazy of me, chickenshit, whatever. But my schedule is pretty full today and I don’t really have the time or inclination for a stern talking to. Thus, a courier.” Sorenson leaned back in his seat, kicking his feet up on the desk and pointing a finger casually at Vulpes. “He’s not going to insist on a game of twenty questions with a third party.”

“So… you just don’t want to talk to him.”

“That’s the long and short of it.”

“And you want _me_ to talk to him.”

Sorenson seemed slightly exasperated. He opened a hand as he opened his mouth, wordlessly gesticulating.

“Talk to him, don’t, I don’t give a fuck; I just need this envelope to stop being on my desk and start being on his. Can you do that?”

“Why a courier? Why not one of your…” Vulpes waved a hand vaguely at the young people in fatigues that scurried past the tent like ants as he fished through his memory for the correct NCR analogue to _tiro_. Green recruits? Privates!

“Shit, if I knew I was gonna get twenty questions from the mailman, too, I wouldn’t have asked,” Sorenson grumbled, tapping ash off his cigarette. “My gofer’s on leave, probably shoving his savings into some Gomorrah girl’s g-string. You’re here. You’re convenient.”

Slowly, Vulpes’ hackles smoothed out as his spike of caution subsided into his usual wariness. He reached out and took the envelope, holding it gingerly in his fingertips like too much contact would poison him.

“Twenty caps,” he prompted quietly, staring at the unmarked envelope. He heard Sorenson count them out, and looked up as a hand reached into his peripheral vision, offering them in another envelope.

“You’re being really weird about this.”

“Didn’t have meeting the leader of the NCR forces on my docket for today,” Vulpes mumbled in defense as he shoved the envelope into his bag and took the caps, busily tucking them away in another pouch. “Wasn’t expecting it.”

Sorenson let his feet drop back to the cracked tarmac and ground his cigarette out in an old ceramic ashtray at the corner of his desk.

“Can’t tell if you’re star struck, or what.”

“Just wasn’t expecting it.”

Vulpes wandered away before Sorenson could keep questioning him. He was too deep in the Med-X, if his trepidation was this obvious. A year ago, he would have been able to maintain a completely unreadable mask through the conversation, taking information and giving none back. He remembered, oh, some time after the first battle for the dam. He was about to send a handful of fresh Frumentarii out, ones with unknown faces who’d grown up in the Legion. He remembered how they’d camped on the edges of the Fort for two weeks, play-acting as profligates. How they’d taught each other to smoke, and to drink without wincing. How they’d stage arguments, screaming at each other, only to immediately break off to critique each other in low murmurs, discussing how to make it look natural, and where they could improve. He remembered two of his men, squatting face to face in the dirt, hissing obscenities at each other until they rolled off the tongue just right. _Fuck. Shit. Bitch. Cunt._

If he were dropped into his own camp right now, he’d fail miserably.

He was still berating himself as he limped back up to the terminal building, clinging a little longer to his self-loathing than he might have normally as something to distract himself from the worse anxiety of what he was about to do.

He _was_ curious, though. He’d heard a lot about Hsu over the years. Respected the man, in his way. Had more than one plan ruined by him. The only scenario he’d ever imagined where they’d meet up close and personal, though, was on the event of New Vegas’ conquering, and Hsu’s inevitable subsequent execution. For some reason, it had never occurred to him that the Legion might lose, and Vulpes would be the imprisoned party- that, in hindsight, felt painfully naive. The thought that they might meet as free men was surreal to imagine.

Standing outside his office door and gnawing at his chapped lower lip, it suddenly felt a little _too_ real, however. At the same time, though, _fake_. Like a stress induced dream, all sharp edges and fever-bright. He swallowed the nervous laughter that squirmed behind his collarbone.

He reached for the door handle, hesitated as his fingers brushed the polished brass, and lifted his hand to give the door two soft knocks with a single knuckle.

“Come in,” came the immediate response.

He turned the door handle, and nudged the door in with his shoulder. Out of habit, he turned the knob silently back to its starting point rather than letting it spring back on its own. Only then did he look up at Brigadier General Hsu.

He was younger than Vulpes expected- younger than _he_ was, at any rate, if he was any judge. Still, stress showed on his face, digging creases around his eyes, into his forehead. There were a few flashes of silver in his dark hair as he glanced up from his paperwork.

“Delivery,” Vulpes said softly, slowly stepping further into the small office. He approached the desk half-turned, minimizing visible surface area. “Prepaid.”

Hsu’s attention was divided; he had a heap of handwritten letters piled in a crinkled mass on his desk, and another stack of crisp blank paper he was scrawling on. As Vulpes got near, he stacked the letters on the blank paper and put a folder over both, hiding them.

“From who?” Hsu asked. His voice was smooth and calm, if a little curt. He reached for a coffee cup, and sighed when it was empty. His fingers hesitated on the white ceramic, though, idly tracing the lip of the mug.

“Lieutenant Sorenson,” Vulpes told him, eyes fixed on Hsu as he pulled the envelope from his bag and passed it to him across the desk. So this was him: one of Vulpes’ greatest adversaries in the war that had eaten the last several years of his life. A quiet man who languishes in the same bureaucracy he supports.

“Thank you,” the Brigadier General said, a smidgen of confusion in his voice. He set the envelope aside, and looked at Vulpes again, his eyes a little sharper this time as he took stock. “I don’t recognize you- Noah. Been a courier long?”

“Long enough.” The fox edged away slightly, uncomfortable. Once again, he was realizing what he had lost sight of in his chem-haze; that, when he gets close enough to observe others, others are suddenly close enough to observe him, too. Somehow, he wasn’t as invisible as he used to be. He fidgeted with his name tag.

“You’ve seen some battle,” Hsu remarked, nodding to his leg.

“Some.”

“You’re not part of the NCR,” Hsu said suddenly, and Vulpes was having trouble keeping up with the shifting conversation. He blinked at the officer, then let his eyes flit around the room, looking for any context of what was happening. All he saw were filing cabinets, an electric fan, a jar of pencils- ordinary office supplies. Nothing telling.

“No,” Vulpes said, growing more uncomfortable. “The delivery was prepaid,” he repeated, backing towards the door.

“Hang on.” And Hsu’s hand was raised slightly, in the universal gesture of ‘calm down’, his face a blend of bemusement and consternation. “I’m just looking for an outsider’s view, I don’t want to cause you any trouble.” In a lower mutter, he added, “Hardly see anyone that isn’t NCR anymore, except from the balcony.”

Vulpes glanced over his shoulder, as if he could see through the wall and out into the terminal building. Hsu’s office was on the second floor, and the walkway that lined the walls looked down onto the reception area where countless merchants, soldiers, and messengers mixed.

“What,” Vulpes said slowly, his gaze sliding fluidly back to Hsu, “did you want to know?”

He took a step back toward the desk, false leg forward. Curiosity, for the moment, was winning.

“You talk to a lot of people in your job. You travel a lot.” There was a shuffle of paper over paper as Hsu took the folder off the stack of reports and picked a few out of the mess. He held them curled off the desk, where Vulpes couldn’t read them. “There’ve been reports of Legionaries throughout the Mojave. Not military detachments, or it doesn’t seem that way, but they’re skittish. They aren’t fighting with our troops or surrendering, they aren’t trading with locals, or talking to them- a couple caravans got hit, but nobody seems to really know what else they’re up to. You seen any of that?”

“Bound to be some stragglers, after the Battle,” Vulpes said, voice low and even. An answer, but not to the question he’d been asked. “Deserters, survivors. The Legion was crushed, so where would they go?”

“The front lines of the Legion were crushed,” Hsu corrected him. “Caesar may or may not be dead, and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of any of his top officers.” Vulpes clenched his jaw to suppress a huff of laughter. “That’s public knowledge. But the Legion is more than its front lines.”

“I’ve heard it said,” murmured the Fox, turning to inspect some framed photographs on top of a filing cabinet, “that the Legion is its army. No Caesar, no army, no Legion. Cut off the head, and the body dies.” He reached out to wipe dust off one photo with his thumb. A family: man, woman, two small boys. A glance to Hsu, and back at the photo, and he was certain this was the man as a child with his parents and brother. “Perhaps your stray Legionaries are just looking for a quieter life.”

“You have a very relaxed opinion of the matter.” The way Hsu said it didn’t sound angry or judgmental, but simply observant.

“It’s not a great climate to be a courier,” Vulpes said, voice almost lost under the drone of ventilation and centuries-old light bulbs. “Aggression born of association. A courier proves dangerous; I am a courier, therefore I am as dangerous as _the_ Courier.” Another glance to Hsu over his shoulder, from under heavy eyelids. He weighed his words. “The Legion’s army was built entirely from slaves, correct? Surely they weren’t all entirely willing. When your tribe is conquered, your family killed, when you’re marched hundreds of miles from the place you were born… where do you go from there?”

“They could go back east to Flagstaff,” suggested the Brigadier General. He rose from his desk and walked over to join Vulpes at the display of photos, but Vulpes saw him coming and paced casually across to the other side of the room to flick a dead desk fan’s blades into a lazy rotation.

“Perhaps some have,” he said, watching the blades spin, ears pricked as Hsu adjusted the photos Vulpes had touched and moved to lean back against the front of his own desk. “I heard about a… movement. A few months back, a fortnight or so after the Battle. A large party moving eastward.”

Hsu hummed, neither confirming nor denying any knowledge of this. Vulpes didn’t care either way. Let Lucius burn. He flicked the fan blade again and turned on the spot to face Hsu.

“You want my advice?” Vulpes asked, eyebrows raised. Hsu lifted his hands from the desk’s edge, offering them palm-up to Vulpes. Go ahead. “Stray Legionaries who aren’t causing problems, aren’t a problem. They’re just men. They act on orders to protect themselves, and the orders aren’t coming anymore. But the Courier… He’s not a problem that goes away. No orders, no masters, no _humanity._ _”_ Vulpes became aware that he’d hissed the last part through bared teeth, and tamped down his wild rage slightly. “He’ll be back. You want my advice, you get the warhawk Moore back to McCarran, and you start paying attention to what comes out of Ashton. It wasn’t the NCR that defeated the Legion at the Dam,” he reminded Hsu, “and it wasn’t the Legion that dropped your general into the canyon.”

“You’re… an interesting man,” the officer said as he watched Vulpes turn to the door.

“These are interesting times.” His voice was dry and brittle, like dead leaves.

“Unfortunately,” Hsu conceded mildly, his voice drifting after Vulpes just before the door drifted shut behind him. Through the wood and wire-reinforced glass, Vulpes heard the word, “ _Ashton_ _…_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, guys, I've been lying. Vulpes is Not Okay and I, for one, am a little concerned about his recent life choices. But hey, I'm sure it'll be fiiiine.
> 
> As always thank you all so, so much for reading! I'm so grateful to have you all here, and your comments and kudos make my day. Thank you :D


	12. Chapter 12

Vulpes was shaking with anger, and covered in blood that wasn’t his.

His mind moved a hundred miles a second as he stripped the corpse like it was a coyote he’d gunned down instead of a man, rifling through his clothes and bags and transferring valuable contents to his own pack. All around, shadows lingered in a halo, intrigued but too scared to try and steal his prey. They’d seen what he’d done. They didn’t want him to do it to them.

He got a couple hundred caps and two handguns off the body, but now it was clean, and still no Med-X. Growling, he pushed himself upright and lurched into the decayed storefront the dealer had operated from, overturning crates and sweeping junk off shelves until he found a small hidden safe in the wall, and a note with its combination nearby. _Dissolute mongrels_ _…_

There was a rattle of stone on asphalt outside, shifted by a careless foot. Vulpes paused in emptying the safe (Med-X, but Psycho too, and Jet, and even a couple Stim-Paks and homemade antivenoms) to peer out the blown out windows. A wisp of a man shied away from the window, wringing his hands. He fixed the man with a glare that could be felt more than seen in the gloom of late evening. Then, he returned his attention to the safe and finished emptying it into his bags.

Task finished, he took up his assault rifle. He let his boot crunch in the glass and dust as he made his way back to the doorway, a warning call going out with every other step: he’s coming. He’ll kill you. Back off.

Sure enough, the addicts fled like roaches from a flame as he emerged from the building again. He gave the corpse one more glance before loping off into the darkening night, jaw clenched and blood pressure high.

He’d been the third dealer that day to refuse him. Where the first two had skittered away into alleys with their clientele like schooling fish before an oncoming shark, however, this one had stood his ground. _Yeah, I deal. No, not to you. Fuck off_.

He was tetchy, mind a little gone with the Med-X, and he’d lost his temper. He wasn’t proud of that. How many years had he spent standing frozen at ease at Caesar’s right hand, soaking in his commentary and criticism without ever rising and snapping back? Somehow, though, that had been different. He hardly knew he’d even reached for his knife before the man was down and rapidly bleeding out, whimpering for his mother.

Vulpes didn’t think he was an unreasonable man. He just wanted to do _business_. If things ended in bloodshed, he might accept responsibility, but he didn’t accept blame. It was suicide, really.

He had calmed down somewhat by the time he reached his nest in Westside, but not entirely. He paced restlessly over unstable floorboards as thoughts raced through his head, disjointed and reaching blindly for each other in the fog.

Dealers were turning him down. No explanation. See him and bolt like he was their personal grim reaper, or have the balls to actually say no. Something bigger was happening here. And it was such a _petty_ thing to fixate on; there were hundreds of junkies across the Mojave he could get his fix from, if he was inclined to wander from the city more often. Still, that shard of mystery and personal insult plagued him. Every step with his stump leg, it stabbed in deeper.

He stalked to the glassless window and leaned his head and shoulders out into the night, hands braced against the sill. A slight breeze ran over his sweat-matted hair, and he reached a hand up to comb through it with his fingers, breaking damp strands apart for better air flow. He needed a haircut.

After a couple minutes of breathing in the darkness, he tilted away from the window again to slump down against the wall below it. It was winter; sun set a little earlier than usual right now, and the night was still young. He was still functional, too- not too doped down to think, but not too sober to walk.

If he wanted, he could lean back into old roles, and go gather some information. He had a decent enough stockpile of Med-X for the time being, with the death ( _murder_ ) of tonight’s dealer, and instead of draining his motivation, it just loaned him confidence. If he burned bridges now, he still had time to figure his shit out later.

He checked the PipBoy, still an alien presence on his forearm. Barely eight o’clock. His preferred dealer was only a few city blocks away, and he’d be out selling for another few hours at least. New Vegas only started coming alive at sunset; most revelers wouldn’t even be drunk yet.

_The city that never sleeps_ , he thought suddenly. Caesar had said that once during a strategy meeting, laughing snidely as he looked over a pre-war map of Vegas. The Malpais Legate had shot him a strange look and grumbled something about how if he was going to misquote Sinatra, then to at least get the city right. The exchange had taken seconds, just an odd vignette inserted into a larger scene that had played out so many times, Vulpes knew it by heart. He wasn’t sure why he’d remembered this, though. Perhaps the novelty of the Legate speaking like a man.

Without thinking, he worked two fingers under the strap of his prosthetic and twisted. A blinding stab of pain shot through his leg, his hip, fizzling at the base of his spine. It pierced sharply through the Med-X like a knife cutting through cloth. He hissed, savoring how that one, clear note could hollow out his skull. He rode the waves of pain that followed sitting stock-still against the wall with leg outstretched, just breathing through it.

Ten minutes later and feeling slightly off balance, he managed to shuffle his peg leg under himself and used the wall as a brace to stand up. Best get to it, while he was still willing and able.

* * *

“I’m retired,” his dealer said, peering at Vulpes over the hand that held his cigarette. The ember reflected orange in his eyes.

Vulpes didn’t respond. He did, however, brush silently past the dealer, shoulders bumping. A shark’s nose, testing for prey. He slipped into the darkness of the building the dealer staked out, more comfortable being able to look out to the world lit in starlight and knowing nobody could look in. His dealer didn’t even try. He held his ground in the doorway, looking out onto the street as Vulpes picked through his meager belongings inside. The fox picked things up, set them down. Opened a bag and found half a dozen syringes of Med-X, and a small assortment of other chems.

“Retired?” He finally asked, his voice soft as it slithered out from the black.

“As of today. You want that shit, it’s yours. But I’m out of the game.”

Vulpes slung the bag over his shoulder to rest with his assault rifle. Moving slow and light, he prowled back toward the door, lurking just behind the dealer, who still didn’t turn to face him.

“I can see which way the wind’s blowing,” the dealer said, gruff but quiet. A couple prostitutes and junkies lingered on the sidewalk opposite, watching, but they were too far to hear.

“What way is the wind blowing?”

The dealer blew out a stream of smoke and watched it fade as it coiled upward, as if testing the air.

“Right into everybody’s fucking face. Same as always.” The man shifted against the door frame enough that he could see Vulpes when he turned his head. “I’m quittin’ Westside. You gonna give me a tailwind, or a tornado?”

Vulpes regarded him for a long second. He ran a thumb under the strap of his stolen bag of chems, and stepped a little closer, until there was only about a foot between them. The dealer glanced down at Vulpes’s other hand, resting on his machete. He seemed to accept it with stoic resignation.

“Why am I a _persona non grata_?” Words that were barely more than a whisper. The dealer took a long drag of his cigarette and sighed.

“Not my call, Fox.” Vulpes’ hand twitched violently and he was about to speak when the dealer continued. “Vault 3,” he said. “Take it up with them.”

He leaned in a little. The dealer turned his head away again, until Vulpes was speaking with teeth six inches from the bared side of his neck.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Only rumors,” was the mumbled response, cigarette dancing in his lips. His gaze was still fixed outward, away. Vulpes watched him carefully, eyes flitting to his pulse, the ember of his cigarette, and the orange glint marking the corner of his eye.

He eased past him again. Their shoulders didn’t touch. Vulpes didn’t look back, and he didn’t need to, to know that the dealer had slipped off in the opposite direction. It occurred to him later that he’d never known his name.

* * *

The last time he’d been to Vault 3, it had been in the Courier’s wake. Dead Fiends had littered the ruins outside the entrance, painting the rubble red as they leaked. Now, the bodies were cleared away, and new guards were posted. Looked like somebody new had moved in and the business stayed the same.

Caps in. Chems out. The wheezing breath of New Vegas.

He didn’t try to hide himself from the guards at the huge gear-shaped door as he approached. His weapons were all in place, but he didn’t raise his hands. Let them worry a little bit. If he got shot, he got shot.

On approach, one of the guards took a few stumbling steps back, then vanished into the Vault, his voice echoing back out from the electric-lit tunnel with some alarm.

“Why you here, cripple?” one of the remaining guards called when he was still ten yards out. He was leaning on crossed arms over a length of nail-studded 2x4. Another holding a machine gun gave him a silent warning glance. From what Vulpes could tell, these weren’t your run of the mill Fiends. Not enough bones in their armor, for one thing, and they weren’t screaming or cackling yet.

“Looking to buy.” He continued a slow approach, and the guard leaning on the board stood upright, swinging the board up onto his shoulder.

“Well, come on in,” he said with a grin, gesturing with mock welcome at the Vault entrance.

Nobody patted him down as he stepped into the long, steel-paneled halls of the old Vault, and nobody confiscated his gear. That could be a good sign, or a bad one: a lack of security measures might indicate bravado or superior firepower. He was betting on the latter.

He was hyper-aware of the machine gun pointed at his back as the guard with the board led Vulpes down winding, mazelike corridors still bloodstained from the Courier’s passage. They skirted past improvised barriers and a couple dozen other guards and lackeys. Most looked on him with neutral disdain, but more than a few got nervous, fast. In his wake, several young men excused themselves from the Vault, probably beating feet to greener pastures.

He heard a rumble of conversation up ahead, and his ears perked. As he was led through a final doorway into a room packed with junkies, all conversation stopped, leaving only the echoed sounds of labored breathing and shuffled feet.

At the center of the room, a man with dark skin ravaged by chem use and metal armor painted a gaudy bright blue sat surrounded by armed guards, and in a greater circle, his admirers and hangers-on. All of them were staring at Vulpes.

“You’d think the Courier cleaning house would have improved the local color,” Vulpes sneered quietly, looking at the snot-nosed whores and wasters around him, staring with hollow, hungry eyes. He turned his attention to the seated man. “You’re leading this… operation?”

“Our… less attentive cousins were wiped out, but the Fiends still own this Vault. We’re just under new management,” their leader told Vulpes with a gap-toothed grin as he slouched on the makeshift throne. “What’s your poison? You’re here to buy… right?”

Vulpes glanced around the congregation of armed guards and lackeys. At least three submachine guns were trained on him from only a few yards away, and he noticed the sharp edge of anxiety in the plastic smile their leader offered him. He was making them uneasy.

“…Med-X,” he finally said, shifting his weight off his prosthetic to remove pressure from the sores on his leg.

“Hm,” the Fiend grunted, leaning thoughtfully back in his chair. One of his groupies immediately snaked an arm over his shoulder from behind him, caressing his chest. Her arm was marred with angry red sores and scratch marks. There was blood and dirt packed under her short nails. The Fiend leader ignored her entirely, fixed on Vulpes. “Yeah. We know you. Had my reps cut you off.”

“Cut me back in,” Vulpes advised quietly. “I always pay.”

“You do,” he conceded, troubled. He looked down at the hand on his chest, caught it gently in his own, inspected it, then calmly removed removed it with a flick and a wave. “But,” he continued, rolling his yellowed eyes back to his guest, “you scare away the rest of the clientele. You’re bad for business. There’s rumors about you. They call you the cripple who walks. The fox with three legs. They say you walked with the Courier.”

There was a murmur of activity in the small crowd that lined the room. A half dozen men forked their index and little fingers into horns on impulse- the mark of the evil eye, and a dead giveaway that they were former Legion. Vulpes slowly looked from face to face, trying to place names to them and failing. They were Legion, but nobody who had served under him. Every time he made eye contact, they immediately broke it, preferring to look at anything but him.

“Yeah,” the Fiend leader repeated, nodding faintly as he watched Vulpes. “We know you.”

“Nobody knows me,” Vulpes countered flatly. He reached into one of the pouches on his belt and pulled out a fat little burlap bag, which he tossed to the leader’s feet. It hit the floor with a metallic rattle, and continued chiming as it rolled and slid to a stop. “Two hundred up front. Another five when I have product in hand.”

Another murmur. An adviser ducked her head to mutter something into the leader’s ear. He frowned heavily, pressed a knuckle to his lips in furtive thought, and sucked in a breath.

“No. You’re cut off.”

Another bag hit the floor.

“Three now, five later.”

“No.”

They stared at each other for a long second. Then, Vulpes ducked his head to stare at his foot for a pensive second before looking up again, resolute.

“If that’s your decision.” He took a step back, spun neatly on his prosthetic, and began the long walk out of the Vault. The leader called after him though.

“You’re leaving the caps.” His tone suggested he wasn’t offering them back, but did volunteer bland surprise that Vulpes hadn’t fought for their return.

“Reparations,” the fox growled over his shoulder without pausing.

There were a few metallic clicks as guns were raised and readied, but he heard the leader behind him say “no, let him go, he’s just a fucking junkie cripple, he can’t do shit. He’s fuckin’ high off his gourd.”

_Just a fucking junkie cripple,_ Vulpes brain echoed as he walked a little faster, breathing hard, _just a fucking junkie cripple, JUST A FUCKING JUNKIE CRIPPLE-_

* * *

He began hunting the next day. Junkie, yes, maybe, and maybe a cripple too, but he could fire a gun. He was really good at firing guns.

The official record was the Frumentarii weren’t assassins, they were scouts and spies. He’d repeated it so many times to Lucius, to both Legates, and to everyone else in his sphere that he’d memorized the spiel. The Frumentarii are spies, not assassins. We watch, we do not kill. We gather information and then we report back and any bloodshed in between is a failing, because we’re invisible, we’re _ghosts_.

All lies, of course. Even when you look at it logically- well, all Frumentarii are Legionaries first, yes? Soldiers. Trained to kill long before they’re trained to blend in. When you’re already teaching stealth skills, how much more work is it to roll violence back into the mix?

So of course, some of the Frumentarii were assassins. Not all of them, and not all of the time. But they were. No big name hits had ever been ordered under Vulpes’ tenure, if you didn’t count Joshua Graham, but hits had been ordered. Some of the more integral links in the NCR chain of command had been quietly cut away and disguised as suicides, animal attacks, and the odd freak accident.

Joshua Graham had been personal, even if he’d never admit it. He’d kept at the assassination attempts long after Caesar had coerced the White Legs into destroying New Canaan before promptly losing interest altogether. The Frumentarii never had much oversight; it had been easy enough to keep those little operations off the books, and write off deaths as casualties of war. He’d probably sent dozen men off to Zion to die, in the hopes they’d drag the Burned Man down with them. Obviously it never quite worked.

He should have just gone himself, he mused as he slunk along a rooftop, watching the activity in the street below. He’d already killed two dealers and their bodyguards, and it was barely evening. He’d managed to pick one cluster of corpses and bolster his stockpile of chems even more. The other, he’d sniped from two buildings away, letting old brickwork support his rifle when his shaking hands couldn’t. Human vultures had beat him to them, stripping them clean of all valuable goods and scattering before he could even get down to street level. It was annoying, but he didn’t focus too much on it. He was making a _point_.

And, honestly, it was nice to have something to do. He slipped into the stalk-and-slaughter mentality like it was a pair of good, broken-in boots. Felt familiar. Didn’t always feel good, though. When he got a little too sober and he came bobbing up into reality again, he was uncomfortably aware of how _reckless_ this all was, and how pointless. There he’d been, trying to keep a low profile, and then he railed against an entire chem operation like a one man army. They were making it easy, too. He was beginning to wonder why he hadn’t just done it this way from the start.

The Courier would hear about him eventually, though, if he hadn’t already. The thought alone made his stomach wrench into a sudden knot.

Day two, and he almost got _got_ , narrowly missing a bullet to the head, courtesy of a lucky shot from a falling bodyguard half a block away. It was less good reflexes and instinct that saved him and more his own unsteadiness on his feet- foot-

He’d tripped, is what happened. Hit a crack in the concrete, landed weird and rolled an ankle, and got hit in the back of the head by a bunch of brick chunks and grit instead of the front of the head with a .32 caliber slug. For a brief moment he’d been stunned, still staggering forward as he scrubbed a hand against the nape of his neck, wiping away red dust, and then he was back to business again. Another dealer fell, more addicts were scattered, and he picked up about a thousand caps worth of chems. It was around this time that he began playing with other chems to supplement the Med-X. A little bit of Psycho, a Mentat or two. It fueled his anger and focus, and it kept him from thinking too much about the blood on his hands. The _literal_ blood on his hands. His skin and armor was blotted with layers of it, crusting and flaking off in chunks. It reminded him of the Legate’s flak vest. He didn’t want to be reminded of the Legate’s flak vest. He took more chems, and he killed more people, and he forgot.

Here, in the narrow streets of the ruined city, he had the upper hand. The tables would turn the moment he tried to go after them in their nest, down in the Vault. His mind always trailed back to the Courier eventually. He’d cleared out countless bunkers, bases, and buildings, and he’d done most of it alone. He’d cleared _this_ Vault before.

Another vignette from his countless meetings with Caesar and the Legate: Caesar, smirking at the Legate’s proposed strategy, then laughing, and saying “W-W-J-D? What would Joshua do?” just to enjoy how Graham scowled. And Vulpes always knew that was meant to be private between them, an aside for everyone else to dutifully ignore without even trying to understand, but it was another saying that lingered in his memory.

W-W-T-C-D? What would the Courier do?

Probably not this, Vulpes admitted on the eighth day, as he took the head off a distant neo-Fiend’s shoulders and swung the sniper rifle up into his arms again. Stealthy as he was, the Courier took it to new levels. Even before he dumped his gray matter into a night stalker, he’d loved his Stealth Boys and subterfuge. He would have made a great Frumentarius. Would have given Vulpes a run for his money.

No. If he had the ambition for it, he would have been Frumentarius Summus himself, Vulpes be damned. Maybe Caesar. Maybe some lofty position even higher. A nameless Courier, supreme emperor of the western territories, and Vulpes believed in the possibility whole heartedly. In a way, it was good that the Courier’s ambitions lied elsewhere.

A Stealth Boy might work, thought Vulpes as he descended three flights of stairs with rifle bouncing on his shoulder, if he could get his hands on one. Go invisible like one of the Courier’s night stalkers, slip inside, and pick them off one by one. It would suit his current… predicament, better than a head-on assault.

He was lucky to find a couple on the market. Mick gave him strange, wary looks from the back of the store as Ralph dug them out of the case for him. Ralph stuttered a bit when he laid down a price tag of three hundred caps for both, but money wasn’t much of an issue for Vulpes by then. He’d toppled more dealers in the previous two weeks than he’d even known were in business before his little campaign began, just following the desperate herds of addicts to the next target, and he had a growing hoard of chems and caps to show for it.

He wondered if this was how the Courier went from the shambling, brain damaged mess he first saw in Nipton to the high roller he’d become in those final days. He leaned inconspicuously against the glass case Ralph rummaged in and pushed the straps of his prosthesis a little deeper into the bloody ruts they’d dug in his leg, focusing intently on the building pain. It didn’t do to compare himself to the Courier.

He set off in the direction of Vault 3, armed with the Courier’s tactics, walking in his footsteps, eager to spill blood where the Courier had before.

* * *

It was a shit show, and very nearly a bad mistake. Very nearly. He couldn’t quite justify writing it off as a total failure, seeing as he was alive and they were dead.

It was embarrassingly sloppy, though. If he were still in the Legion, he’d be ashamed of himself. There was a time in his youth he would have reported his own inadequacies as critically as a superior officer would.

There weren’t any superior officers anymore, but the injuries he’d sustained did their fair share of complaining. He stabbed one Stimpak into his arm after another, letting it stretch its icy tendrils through his veins and knit together shredded tissue.

He’d gotten further than he really expected before the first Stealth-Boy gave out, bringing him flickering back into view while three Fiends still stood, weapons drawn. He’d dropped them fairly quickly with a silenced sidearm and machete, but a lucky swipe of a knife drew an ugly gash down the outside of his upper arm between two panels of armor. Blood had slicked his arm by the time he tore the first Stealth-Boy off his wrist and activated his backup, vanishing again.

And, of course, the second Stealth-Boy’s longevity was cut short when an unusually perceptive woman with three quarters of a pool cue noticed the shimmer in the air and swung at him. The sharp, splintered end of the cue bashed against his arm and thigh, knocking some fiddly components from the surface of the Stealth-Boy with a crack.

From there, it was mayhem, and he remembered it only as a chem-induced blur of pain. He got stabbed by the cue in his lower left abdomen. He got stabbed again, this time by a knife in his shoulder, just missing his neck. A panicked guard fired half a clip down a hallway, missing Vulpes but catching another Fiend with ricochet. He managed to give Vulpes a solid kick to his gimp leg before he was put down. After that, Vulpes had had to drag himself behind a crate to catch his breath and use the first Stimpak, face blanched white.

Oh, but it had been _worth_ it when he finally got back up, dusted himself off, and lurched into the throne room like death itself. A low caliber bullet immediately bit into his side (through and through, probably not lethal, but very painful if he stopped long enough to acknowledge it), but then the leader’s gun jammed, and all he could do as Vulpes slowly approached was desperately try- and fail- to free the stuck shell.

Twenty three dead by Vulpes’ count, as he hobbled from room to room, sweeping chems and caps up for himself and pocketing a few valuable looking weapons. Probably some sort of record, for him. Nothing compared to how many people he’d heard were in the Vault when the Courier had enjoyed his own massacre, though.

He ground a fist into his leg, and the Stimpak’s influence meant the pain burned and froze and numbed all at the same time- flesh tearing, flesh healing, flesh tearing. He growled wordlessly and unstrapped the crushed Stealth-Boy from his arm as he moved to the exit.

Sloppy work, but no survivors. There was that.

Although, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure what was going to happen once he ran out of the massive stockpile of Med-X he now had hidden away. Presumably some faction or another would crawl into the niche he’d just opened. Joshua Graham would say something about power vacuums; Caesar would make a crack about- Vulpes didn’t know. He wasn’t familiar enough with whatever cultural background Caesar and Graham shared. He could imagine the timbre of their little spats easily enough, but the words wouldn’t come.

He emerged from the Vault, stepping over a corpse as he climbed the shallow ramp to the outside world. He paused to vomit at the mouth of the tunnel. It wouldn’t be until days later, when he’d finally let himself get halfway sober, that he really appreciated how much dumb luck he’d had.

He tried not to think about the number of people he’d killed, or how, or why, or that his spree stood as a mirror image to what the Courier had done before. It didn’t do to compare himself to the Courier, he repeated. He was nothing like the Courier, he repeated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That Escalated Quickly
> 
> Thank you all for reading! I really don't have the words to properly express how absolutely grateful I am to have you here. Your comments, kudos, and ART (holy shit! still reeling over that!) are the highlights of my day! Thank you so much. You're the best folks around. <3


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends. I am so flattered. There wasn't one piece of fanart made for this fic, there were TWO. I'm awestruck. Thanks so much to [mamasparky](https://mamasparky.tumblr.com/) for their incredible art! Go show them some love!

Coward that he was, he ran off to Primm with his tail between his legs once he was lucid enough to realize he’d probably just pissed off half the city by disrupting their sources of chems. A few days there, a few days back, and some time to let the bodies cool.

As was often the case when it came to social matters, he was entirely wrong.

When he finally set foot back in Westside, laden down by a fortnight of mail bound for Vegas, half the men that saw him immediately turned on their heels and retreated to darker shadows, watching from relative safety. Vulpes was just as paranoid as they were, sticking close to the wall and watching people watch him.

He carefully rounded a corner, and a trio of young men across the street turned their faces away so fast he could feel their whiplash himself. It made his skin crawl. He picked up the pace back to his nest, extremely aware of how empty his block had become in his absence. Faces he’d recognized as silent neighbors were conspicuously gone. The only sound was the wind pushing trash down the street.

He didn’t like it. Not even a little bit. He still felt like there were eyes on him when he was in the privacy of his nest, picking up more Med-X and dropping off his heavier gear. He found himself searching for the telltale blur of night stalkers, something he seldom did in the city, and never when he was this heavily chemmed. He didn’t want to linger here longer than he needed to. It seemed pretty obvious nobody had messed with his living space, and everything in the old floor safe under the bed was still where it should be, but the feeling was surreal- like his entire building had become unmoored and drifted away from civilization when he wasn’t looking.

After a week on the road and still nervously watching the ground twenty feet back for signs of invisible predators, this was too much for him to handle. He set out to make deliveries, more for something to occupy himself with than for the caps. He would be good on caps for some time, with all the dealers he rolled.

It was his usual route; mostly various shops throughout Freeside, but also the Old Mormon Fort and McCarran. His legs carried him on autopilot, allowing his mind to wander. It couldn’t wander far, however; his eye kept being drawn to scared looking boys with strange fading tan lines who caught glimpses of him and showed him their backs, all hunched shoulders and fidgeting hands. Lots of boys, still young, and older men, and more than a few women. It felt like he carried the wind with him, blowing everyone around on a pivot.

_Don_ _’t look at me._ How far had that warning traveled?

He didn’t want them looking at him, that was true. Somehow, though, this very pointed not-looking everyone was doing was worse. The only consolation was that, with their backs to him, they were the vulnerable parties, and they were clearly much more nervous than he was.

That part felt good, at least.

He went to the Mormon Fort first. He’d arrived back in the city in mid-morning, and it was still before noon when he reached the front gates. The nearer he got, the more relieved he was to find that the crowd began to ignore him more than they avoided him. Mostly NCR folks here, and out-of-towners come for the medical services, all of them blissfully ignorant of the one-legged man that slipped by them.

There was no need to hunt for Julie, this time. She saw him first and all but mobbed him at the gates, hands outstretched before she thought again and drew them back to press palm-to-palm at her chin.

“You’re back! Oh, god, I wasn’t sure after- I’m sorry, thank you so much for this, you have no idea,” she rambled. Vulpes blinked at her, truly startled.

“What?”

“You left so abruptly the last time you were here,” Farkas replied, a small crease forming between her eyebrows. “I know you didn’t appreciate… Well, I thought I’d run you off. It’s good to see you.”

Overwhelmed and uncertain what to do with that information, Vulpes rested a hand meaningfully on the mail bag.

“I have packages for you,” he said gruffly, moving toward the tower that stood in the corner of the Fort to get out of the flow of traffic. Julie stayed at his side, still pouring out mixed apologies and gratitude, and more apologies when she noticed yet again how uncomfortable it made him.

“Listen,” she said suddenly as they stepped into the latticed shadow of the wall’s inner awning. “I can’t think of a delicate way to say this- you smell like an open wound. I mean, you _reek_ of blood. Are you okay? Is your leg-”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Vulpes grumbled, glancing around for Arcade Gannon and spotting him standing head and shoulders above a cluster of patients between a couple tents, facing the other direction. “Who said it was my blood?”

“I really wouldn’t mind looking at it,” Julie pressed as she smoothed the receipts Vulpes passed her against the wall and signed them with a nub of a pencil from her lab coat pocket. When she returned the paper, her name was a bumpy and jagged scrawl. “As a favor,” she added, “just to be sure everything is okay.”

“I’m not interested,” Vulpes said, putting some force behind his words. Gannon finished speaking with the patients, and as they walked away towards the gates, he turned, hand over his mouth as he considered some papers in his hand.

“Well,” started Farkas, chewing on the dented ferrule of her pencil, “you’re keeping it clean? Not overusing it?”

“Mm,” came the absent response; Vulpes was turning his head every few seconds, splitting his attention between Gannon and Farkas.

“I- I’m sorry, is there something interesting I’m missing?” Julie asked, her tone changed as she stepped a little nearer and tried to match Vulpes’ sight lines. Quickly, he shook his head and stepped back.

“No. No,” he stalled, glancing one more time at Gannon despite himself before setting his jaw and turning his back on him entirely. “I’m just…” He waved a hand around his head. “Scattered.”

He caught her sneaking looks at the insides of his arms again before meeting his gaze, maybe staring a little too hard into his pupils.

“Could be a sign of infection, or… something else.” She was being charitable; he found himself oddly grateful she hadn’t started in on him again over the chem use. “Are you getting ulcers? How are you cleaning them?”

“Uh. Vodka.” What he hoped was a covert peek back to Gannon showed him slowly moving their way, nose still buried in his paperwork. “Rubbing alcohol when I can get it- perhaps you could show me what I should use,” he finished in a rush, foot rocking anxiously in the dust, ball to heel and back again.

“Yes,” Julie agreed quickly, glad to finally be able to doctor him. “Of course. Follow me.”

She thankfully led him away from Gannon, along the wall until they reached the far guardhouse. She held the door open for him, and kept it open after they went inside.

“I’d love to convert it into something more useful at some point,” Julie said with a shrug, “but right now we’re using this building for storage.” Crates and cardboard boxes fuzzy and soft with age littered the floor. A few empty cans glinted in the dark corners. The light spilling in from the open door could be seen in the heavy dust in the air; it made Vulpes’ throat feel dry and thick but he just swallowed it down. Better this than the risk of being seen and recognized.

Julie spent the next fifteen minutes digging through various boxes, vanishing from the waist up into some of the larger ones, and lining up various glass and plastic bottles on an old bench, educating Vulpes on what could be used, what should be used, what to avoid. He put on the face he’d always worn when he was standing in Caesar’s quarters and bore the lecture with polite patience, pretending he didn’t already know most of this by the time he was brought into the Legion. The Followers had visited his birth tribe, after all. It was Followers who taught them about medicine and chemistry. Indirectly, it had been the Followers who had taught them that donor blood with chems in it would make the recipient high.

And Edward Sallow. Caesar. Considering how Followers had destroyed his chances for a childhood and went on to usurp his adulthood too, he was surprised at his own sense of mild detachment from the group as a whole. All he really felt about them was a tinge of dark humor at the irony of their pacifist agenda. And, right at that moment, more than a little boredom, though that was more about Farkas than the whole organization, and not really her fault. He _had_ asked.

“And you’re _sure_ you don’t want me looking at your sores?” Farkas asked one final time as she emerged from the guardhouse with an armful of antiseptic with the fox in tow. “You look like one well aimed kick would drop you. If you’re self-conscious, we can do it inside.”

“It’s not about that,” he told her, throwing her a bone out of sheer exhaustion. “Not moving fast enough was what cost me my leg to begin with. I won’t be a cripple in a fort full of strangers.”

She sighed, but she didn’t argue; it was another point they would simply have to disagree upon in silence. The bottles in her arm sloshed as she held them out to him.

“Well, take these at least. Keep those sores clean and hopefully you’ll be able to avoid a nasty infection. It is inevitable, though,” she cautioned. “Wandering the wastes with open wounds. It’s not sustainable.”

“It has to be,” was his short reply, but he took the bottles. They stood in amiable silence together for half a minute as Vulpes tucked the antiseptic away in his pack and Julie looked over her open-air clinic, watching it buzz in the height of its midday activity.

“I still haven’t paid you for those packages,” Julie said, watching one of her medics move from tent to tent with freshly laundered sheets and towels.

“Consider this payment.” He lifted the last bottle of peroxide in the air as if toasting her before he packed it away with the others.

“It’s not enough,” she lamented. She didn’t continue, but Vulpes didn’t respond, either. He leaned against the guardhouse wall and surveyed the fort with her. The medic carrying the laundry dropped a towel, swore, and struggled to crouch and pick it up without letting the edge of a sheet drag in the dirt.

“How can you justify it?” he asked her abruptly. “Treating these people, knowing how they spend their days. Or worse, not knowing.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Healing killers,” he suggested mildly, ignoring how Farkas had given up her observations to watch him instead. “Helping people that would never help anyone else. Giving addicts the benefit of the doubt, that this time they’ll stay clean. Knowing that the moment they step out into the world again, they just go back to the same violent lives.”

“I think everyone deserves the chance to change,” she said after a moment of thought, and it sent the ghost of a scowl flitting across Vulpes’ face. She sounded like Doc Mitchell.

“It is a trait among doctors, then, to ignore the evil their patients will do, or is it just the hallmark of the pacifist?”

This pulled an affronted scoff from Julie, though she didn’t sound truly angry.

“Have you considered that you’re just overly cynical?” She shook her head and crossed her arms. “It’s never as simple as good and evil. Maybe good and evil don’t even matter. It’s just perspective, right? There are people who think the Followers are evil because we believe in self-governance and won’t support any factions exclusively. There are people who think we’re good for the exact same reasons. It’s never simple. Nobody is all good, and nobody is all evil, and what you consider good and evil says more about you than them.”

“Then what’s the point?” He crossed his arms, less as an aggressive gesture and more to keep them close and occupied.

“Maybe it’s just numbers. When we stop worrying about good and evil, and start focusing on just keeping as many people alive as possible. Most the people we see here, we never even know their names. We just help them, because it’s one more person who lives to see tomorrow.”

“You think it’s worth it? Even if they kill a dozen people tomorrow?”

“They might rescue a dozen people, there’s no way of knowing. What _might_ happen doesn’t factor in. Can’t, or shouldn’t. What matters is what’s real, and right in front of me. I look at this fort,” Julie said, waving a hand at the camp’s activity, “and I see people who came here for help, receiving it. That’s what matters. The one life we know we can save. It’s all there is to consider. The act of giving is the payoff, not what people do with that gift.”

They stood in silence again. A couple crows flew overhead. The medic with the laundry stripped a cot in a tent that faced them and lined it with his last clean set of sheets.

“And, you know,” Julie mused, “it’s about more than just offering medical attention. The Followers, I mean. We set an example and show people how we _can_ live, and what can be accomplished if we just work together in peace. If we pick and choose who we help according to what we think of their lives, what kind of people does that make us? What kind of example are we setting? Offering aid with no strings attached makes us better people, and gives other people that opportunity to improve, too.”

She paused, and smiled fleetingly.

“It doesn’t always feel great, doing this work, but it always feels _worth it_.”

The sentiment sat uneasily with Vulpes. He fidgeted where he leaned, eyes still panning from tent to tent, but picking viciously at a hangnail until bright blood lined his cuticle. He absentmindedly licked it away and pressed his bleeding finger hard into the hem of his shirt, poking out underneath the edge of his armor.

“I have other deliveries to make,” he announced bluntly. Julie smiled again, unsurprised, and waved him off.

“Take care. Wait- I still don’t know your name!”

He pretended he didn’t hear her, and he made it out the front gates without being chased down, by her _or_ Arcade Gannon.

So far so good, but the sun still sat high in the sky. He repositioned his assault rifle over his pack as he slipped into Freeside’s midday bustle, ignoring the loud chatter of streetside vendors, tourists, criers, and prostitutes. If this is what it was like to be wealthy, he thought to himself, it was no wonder the Courier caused as much trouble as he did. The boredom was overwhelming, and coupled with the constant thrum of dread that had lined his bones since the Battle for the Dam, it was nearly unbearable. He felt like he was sitting on his hands, just waiting for the world to crash down around him.

He half wished he’d taken his time wiping out the Fiends. It had been a distraction when he’d really needed one. Now, all he had was the mail. He held his mail bag open to get a look at what was left.

A few boxes and bundles for Freeside businesses. A package for one Lieutenant Sorenson, surprise, surprise. Another for Corporal Betsy, whoever that was. The name sounded vaguely familiar. He was mentally shuffling through old spy reports as he stepped into a discount goods shop and dropped off a poorly wrapped brown paper package with the woman at the register. He’d given up trying to remember by the time he completed his second Freeside delivery to a street vendor selling steaming mystery meats to passersby.

Instead, he brooded on the subject of James Hsu. He’d been a little too high when they’d met. A lot too high. He replayed their conversation over and over in his head, cringing at how much information he gave, and how little was received. Not that the information he gave was particularly useful- the cold blooded part of his brain that sat hunkered down in his skull below the influence of chems was eternally focused on self-preservation. If anything, he’d advised tolerance of potential Legionary survivors.

And he’d warned him about the Courier. He couldn’t regret that.

He casually looked back over his shoulder, but there were too many people on the street to know if there were any night stalkers, too. That was fine. He still wasn’t convinced they were even real. It was clear to him that, whether he liked it or not, all was not well in his head these days. The Courier had broken him in a spectacular fashion.

For a brief moment, as he boarded the monorail toward McCarran, he wondered what patterns Craig Boone’s mind had splintered into, or Joshua Graham’s. Like a million mirrors hitting pavement, they all broke differently, and piecing themselves back together in the same shape they started in was an impossible task.

The monorail arrived at the old airport, and Vulpes’ mind was still wandering as he limped down the dark hallway toward the dead escalators and down to the reception desk with the small crowd of fellow passengers. His head was beginning to ache, pulsing in time with his leg; he itched to find a quiet corner to shoot up, but he wanted to stay sharp this time around.

He collected his name badge from the woman in reception and immediately set off for the concourse to find Sorenson. He still didn’t know who this Betsy person was, but perhaps Sorenson could point him in the right direction.

As he went, conversations among the visiting traders and mercenaries halted as heads turned; some towards, some away. Vulpes didn’t notice. He hobbled out into the sun.

Sorenson wasn’t in his tent, but his gofer was: a young man, maybe twenty years old, face still round and blemished. He was sitting in Sorenson’s chair, feet on the desk, but he flushed red with guilt and leapt up as Vulpes stepped inside.

He pointed Vulpes to a different tent, stuttering directions interspersed with pleas of _“please don’t tell the L-T, he’d be pissed,”_ and then Vulpes was off again. He found Sorenson right where the kid had told him to look, in a tent set up a couple rows away. A small generator rumbled behind one canvas wall, powering a row of coffee pots on a flimsy card table inside. The lieutenant and half a dozen others were standing around it or seated on folding chairs making idle conversation.

“Ah, if it isn’t my favorite courier,” Sorenson said when he noticed Vulpes lingering outside. He stood up from a chair and excused himself from the group with a tiny wave of his hand. He joined Vulpes outside the tent with his coffee mug still in hand. It was labeled _#1 Mom_.

“Another package for you.”

“I figured. Let’s walk.” He set a leisurely pace back towards his own tent, slow enough that Vulpes could limp comfortably at his side. “If we go slow enough, Private Andretti might even notice us coming and save some face.”

“He was sitting at your desk,” Vulpes said. “He was very insistent that you didn’t find out.”

“Smart boy, taking a load off when he gets the chance. That’s the trick to survive war, isn’t it?” He gave a wry laugh. “I like to keep him on his toes though. We’re working on his spatial awareness, whether he realizes it or not. Say,” he said, suddenly a little too sharp, “What did you say to Hsu when you delivered that report for me?”

Vulpes didn’t look at him. He stayed professionally opaque.

“We talked about the weather.”

“If by weather you mean the political climate?”

“Politics don’t interest me,” he replied with some honesty. He’d never really cared for that aspect of the job; it was the organization and puzzle solving that had satisfied him. “He asked for my thoughts, and I shared them.”

“From what I heard, you have some real interesting thoughts,” Sorenson commented. “Where do you hear this stuff?”

“I’m a courier,” Vulpes muttered. He left it at that. Sorenson cocked his head dramatically, letting his feet swing in slow arcs as he proceeded, hands in pockets.

“That’s fair, that’s fair.” Beat. “Lots of couriers are Legion spies. Well known fact.”

“How many cripples have you seen in the Legion ranks?” was the bitter response. “If you don’t like what I discuss with the Brigadier General, then tell him to stop asking.”

“You, uh- you know he’s my C-O, right? Not even _my_ C-O, he’s, like. My C-O’s C-O’s C-O. I don’t tell him what to do. I just smile and salute and do what _he_ tells _me._ ”

“No, you’re better connected than that,” Vulpes said distantly, speaking as the thought occurred to him. “Constant packages from the NCR, all books. Very secretive. Maybe for codes. You report directly to the most superior officer this side of Death Valley, and _he_ tells you the details of private conversations he’s had with strangers. And until the second battle at the Dam, you were stationed out of the monorail station on the Strip. You’d have much better access to informants and spies from there.” He blinked thoughtfully and furrowed his brow before looking appraisingly at Sorenson with a humorless half smile. “You’re training your assistant in covert operations and he doesn’t even know it.” He turned his smile to the horizon. “Intelligence, I would guess, or counter-intelligence- something in that vicinity. Hidden in a lower rank to avoid suspicion. Very clever.”

After a moment of hesitation, Sorenson breathed a huff of laughter. It didn’t sound convincingly sincere to Vulpes’ ears.

“Well, that’s quite a theory you’ve got there. Maybe it if were true I’d be paid better.”

“You’re paid plenty,” Vulpes commented, watching a cluster of rangers walk by in the other direction. “You have no problem paying me.” He cast a wry look sidelong. “That’s more than most can say.”

“I’m not a spy, or whatever you think I am.”

“Neither am I,” Vulpes lied blithely, confident that Sorenson would never be fully convinced either way.

“No, you’re just a courier.” There was more than a hint of sarcasm there.

“Nobody is _just_ a courier.”

This earned a deep frown from Sorenson, before he restored his vague, pleasant smile.

“Maybe so, maybe so. You know, they tried to keep the details surrounding General Oliver’s death under wraps. Gave lots of bonuses and commendations to lots of soldiers to make sure their traps stayed shut. And then you come along, talking about it, saying you were there.”

“We’ve discussed this,” he reminded the officer blandly.

“Yeah, but it still seems a little strange. I did some asking around and nobody seems to remember you there.”

“Intelligence,” Vulpes repeated under his breath with a slow nod. He stopped on the path, and Sorenson drew to a halt a few feet ahead of him before turning around and closing the distance again. They were close enough to keep their conversation quiet. Vulpes stared shrewdly at him. “I was at the dam. Mercenary. Nobody _invited_ me; I thought maybe I could kill some Legionaries, win some gold and glory. Instead I got a machete to the leg and a nice clear view of your general being dumped over the dam by Securitrons. Leg got infected. Leg got cut off. Spent a few weeks recovering, wound up in Primm, got recruited as a courier there. That’s the whole story.”

“…Hm,” was all Sorenson said, but he shrugged, and they continued walking without further conversation.

Private Andretti seemed to be a moderately fast learner; when they stepped into the tent’s shade, he was standing at ease, ready to greet them. Sorenson waved him down and headed immediately for his desk to retrieve caps to pay Vulpes.

“I hope there’s no bad blood between us,” he said genially as he counted caps. Vulpes waited a few feet away, turned with his side to Sorenson as he looked outside the tent. “I’m just a curious motherfucker, is all. Gotta stay informed, if you want to stay on top. Of course, I’m not gonna go writing reports or spreading rumors about you. You’re just an interesting sort of man.”

It was Vulpes’ turn to grunt in reply. This was the second time he’d been called “interesting” by an NCR officer. He wasn’t sure he liked it. “Interesting” was hardly more than a synonym for “dangerous.” And of course, the unspoken deal in Sorenson’s tone just confirmed his newfound suspicions. _I won_ _’t talk about you_ , he insinuated, _if you don_ _’t talk about me. You know I’m an intelligence agent, but nobody else needs to know. Just like nobody needs to know that I think you’re more than you let on._

Caps changed hands, and so did a book wrapped in paper. Vulpes was already out of the tent when he remembered, and leaned back in.

“Do you know where I can find a Corporal Betsy?”

Sorenson blinked and lit a cigarette.

 “She’s First Recon, if memory serves. Check their tent.”

Vulpes didn’t thank him, but did offer a nod, and then he left once again.

First Recon. That wasn’t ideal. This whole visit to McCarran was just turning out to be a shit show. He took his time wandering to their tent. He had no idea what happened to Boone after Primm, but it seemed possible he might have returned to the fold. Granted, Vulpes hadn’t seen him in the tent with the other snipers the first time he visited McCarran, but then, Gannon hadn’t been in the Old Mormon Fort the first time, either. Times changed.

Even if Boone hadn’t rejoined the unit, there was still the unfortunate chance he could be recognized. They were called First Recon for a reason- they were reconnaissance troops. If anybody in the unit had been posted in a skirmish Vulpes had presided over, it was possible, if unlikely, that he could be recognized.

When he arrived at the correct tent, he took a furtive look inside from across the walkway. The first thing he noticed was his own face, goggled and helmeted, staring back at him from that horrible propaganda poster. It was pinned to the canvas of the tent. Several darts stuck out of the heavily perforated paper. More than a few tears in the canvas around the paper had been duct taped over, as well.

Not a great sign.

There were a handful of snipers, there, too. A small young man half-lost behind his face wrap and glasses was sitting in a metal folding chair with a tattered paperback in his lap. He was tracing the words on the page with one finger, tracking his progress. Two more soldiers in fatigues stood in the tent together, their backs to Vulpes. A much older man with visibly gnarled hands and a gray, wrinkled face was seated nearer to the open side of the tent. His eyes were shaded by a ranger’s hat, and he was watching the people pass by. He was, Vulpes noticed with some discomfort, keeping an eye on him.

Best not to tarry, then.

Vulpes slunk to the tent’s opening. He looked down at the package in his hand, then up to the snipers.

“I’m looking for a Corporal Betsy.”

One of the figures with their back to him turned, revealing her to be a strongly built woman with almost delicate features disguised by armor, aviators, and the iconic red beret.

“That’s me,” she said gruffly. “What do you want.”

“Package for you,” Vulpes said, ignoring the old man’s eyes on him as he stepped into the tent. He carefully kept his distance from the poster they were using for target practice. “It says my fee is enclosed.”

“Good, because I ain’t fucking paying you; I didn’t order shit.”

She took the package and the receipt, scrawling an “X” across the signature line before peeling back the tape of the small box Vulpes handed her. Whatever was inside, her face went immediately blank.

“Is this a fucking joke?” she asked, looking accusingly up at Vulpes before turning her suspicions on her fellow snipers. She folded the cardboard flaps of the box back down, looking for some sort of return address. “Who sent this?”

“N-n-not m-me,” the shy young man with the face wrap said. The angry looking goateed man Betsy had been talking to before Vulpes appeared shook his head dismissively and walked away.

“I’m just a courier,” Vulpes said flatly when she scowled at him again. “My pay.”

Jaw squared, Betsy opened the box again. She pulled out a book, which she dropped directly into the garbage can under the makeshift dartboard, and tossed the bag of caps that had sat nestled underneath it to Vulpes. He fumbled it, and it dropped to the ground. When he crouched to pick it up, he saw the cover of the book in the trash- “Garden of Growth: Finding Peace After Trauma.” A slender pair of hands, vaguely feminine, cupped a handful of dark earth and a vivid green sprout above the embossed title.

“Fuck all of you,” Betsy snarled at nobody in particular. Vulpes braced hands to knees to stand upright again, and he excused himself from the tent. He began to walk away, but slowed, and then came to a halt, thoughts floating shapelessly through his mind. Without being quite certain why, he turned back, returning to the tent. Betsy jutted her chin into the air at the sight of him.

“The fuck you want now.”

“I’ll buy the book off you,” he said from the path just outside the tent. He held up the packet of caps she’d just paid him. Her expression stayed diligently hard as she reached into the trash for the book, holding it by the corner of the spine as if it could infect her with something. She carried it out to him, and they traded. Vulpes was well aware of the silent aspersion the old man was sending his way, conveyed with a pursing of lips and narrowing of eyes. Well, if the old man didn’t send the book, Vulpes thought to himself as he went on his way, he knew who did. He couldn’t bring himself to care.

He flipped the book over in his hands and slowly read the summary on the back cover, lips moving as he silently shaped the words. He wasn’t too sure why he’d bought the book off her. He didn’t really think it would help him in any capacity, but… He shook his head and stuffed the paperback into his mail sack, refusing to think too much about it. He was just bored, he told himself, and struggling through a book would eat up his time like nothing else. That was all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading and leaving your kudos and comments. This is such a gratifying fic to write, and that's in large part because you're such incredible folks yourselves!


	14. Chapter 14

He read the book on his next trip out to Primm. It was just as purple and flowery as the cover and title made it seem, but it also left a strange warmness in the hollow behind his heart once he’d figured out most of the harder words.

Self help. It wasn’t something he was familiar with. Self preservation was more his speed; everything he’d done, he’d done to survive another day. The book suggested that perhaps he deserved more. Perhaps he was capable of achieving more, all on his own.

He scoffed at the author’s naivete. But then, she had been born before the bombs fell. She hadn’t grown up in a world where brutality was the rule rather than the exception. Step one, she said, was to experience your feelings instead of ignoring them. He suspected she had never pledged her life and loyalty to a slave army, or been sent by a madman on a death march through hell with a sworn enemy and a gangrenous leg.

Still…

He sat close to his campfire with the paperback, back half-turned to the flames to let the orange light flicker over the pages. His progress was slow; he would likely never be a great reader, but in ways it was a boon. When he was focused on the words, he wasn’t focused on the things that went bump in the night around him.

When his eyes got tired, he closed them.

 _Don_ _’t avoid your emotions,_ the book said. He thought for a long time, and then he let his mind sit blank and open for even longer. He didn’t feel anything. He didn’t feel anything at all, and that yawning _nothing_ was somehow just as bad as the occasional flashes of rage and desperation that emerged from it.

 _It_ _’s okay,_ the book said. _However you feel, that_ _’s all right. We all process it differently_.

He pushed with his legs to press his back more firmly into the sandstone formation he was wedged against. He was pretty sure there was more to “processing” than an empty continued existence, but maybe not. How would he know? He’d never had the time or opportunity to really think about it before. Secretly, he wasn’t even sure what trauma had driven him to buy that book out of a trash can. The trauma of watching his tribe killed and assimilated? Of being a soldier? Of living in the high stress environment of Caesar’s inner circle, or the trauma of being singled out and tortured by the Courier? Or maybe the trauma of navigating a world he was entirely unprepared for, utterly alone? Were those even traumas? Was there a requirement, some definition of trauma he didn’t understand? He was so certain that it entailed pain, _specifically_ pain, and the only _pain_ that plagued him was the cramping of his ghost leg.

He took a deep breath, held it, and released.

 _We all process it differently_.

He knew he was fucked up. He’d been _born_ fucked up, and his upbringing had just compounded everything. It seemed unlikely his knots would ever be fully untangled, but maybe he could smooth out the snarl just a little bit.

 _Don_ _’t compare yourself to others. Your progress is your own_.

He was making good time to Primm, this go around. How about that for real, tangible progress.

He picked up a stone that had broken from the boulder and flung it out into the darkness through the flames. He heard it bounce twice on the packed earth before landing in some scrub with a dry rustle.

 _Finding Peace._ Ha. Who was he kidding. Death and destruction followed in his wake like a pariah dog.

He threw the book toward the fire next, but not quite into it. In the morning, when it was down to its last embers, he carefully picked the book out of the dust and packed it away again.

* * *

_Eat healthy foods_ , the author recommended. Vulpes had a dark little chuckle about that one as he staggered out of Primm, chewing industriously on a spiny agave leaf. When you’re hungry, all food is healthy.

When he was young, only months after he was taken by the Legion, he and several dozen other survivors of conquered tribes were marched across the Utah salt flats. It wasn’t done maliciously, Vulpes was certain; someone in command had misread a map, or misjudged a distance, and by the time they’d realized it it was too late to turn back. The final death toll included as many grown Legionaries as it had children.

It had been blindingly bright, and where the ground wasn’t stark white, it was a glassy mirror of the sapphire blue sky. He’d been able to taste the salt in the air; it precipitated on his lips, his skin. His hands and face were chapped, cracked and bleeding. His eyes stung from the salt and dust. Wet salt weighed down his boots, dragging him back in the muck. They walked for days. They ran out of water first, and food shortly after, and then it was just a matter of time.

He remembered one boy, like something out of a fever dream- Vulpes and Gaius and several others had been trudging along together, gradually slowing, with an exhausted adult Legionary driving them onward. One of the older boys had crouched down in the muck. He stared down into its mirror smooth surface, then scooped the wet salt up in cupped hands, and he ate it.

And- Vulpes was almost certain of this, though his memories of those days were hazy and unclear even when he was stone cold sober- the boy _knew_ how foolish it was. Suffer through the hunger and the thirst and you might survive. Cave to your body’s demands, drink the saltwater, and you die. No ifs, no maybes. You cave, you drink, you die. And the boy caved, the boy drank, and soon enough, the boy died- just another dark spot marring the bright of the flats.

He knew. He _knew_ , and he drank, because easing the pain and meeting death head on was preferable to spending another day just _existing_ in that agony.

 _Eat healthy foods_ , the author said. Vulpes wondered how she’d classify a fistful of salt.

* * *

If there was anything Vulpes agreed with the author on, it was the importance of exercise.

Her reasoning was this: doing exercise makes your body produce hormones that ease stress and make you happy. It also makes your body stronger and healthier. On top of that, it helps you form healthy routines and serves as a good outlet for excess energy and emotion. Therefore, exercise is good for body and mind.

Vulpes would have argued that exercise means you can run faster and longer, and therefore are less likely to be dismembered by a deathclaw that wandered absurdly far from Quarry Junction. It might be blind and sickly and malnourished, but if it’s faster than you, you’re dead. Being dead isn’t healthy, and nobody wants to spend their final moments screaming in agony as a giant lizard rips the meat from their bones. Exercise reduces the odds of that happening. Therefore, exercise is good for body and mind.

Not that he could say it made him _happy_. Not being eaten alive was definitely preferable, but it wasn’t the stuff hopes and dreams were built on. The woman who wrote the book definitely enjoyed the actual act of running much more than he did.

But, Vulpes supposed as he looked back and saw that the deathclaw had finally given up, the author had probably never seen an animal larger than a dog. Men were the most dangerous creatures in her life.

They were the most dangerous creature in his, too. That was two things they had in common.

* * *

The most important thing, the author said time and time again, was having a support network of people who would be there for you, to listen and to care. Even in the Legion, Vulpes didn’t think he had that. There were people obligated to listen. Gaius, he was fairly certain, had cared in his way. But nobody had ever really known him, and if they cared, they cared about the image of him they held in their own minds and hearts. For Gaius, perhaps a romanticized stoic, or a childhood crush- within the framework of the Legion, with its strict command structure and code of conduct, he could never tell. Among his other subordinates, perhaps he was seen as a fair and stable leader. His commanding officers, a skilled soldier.

All him; none him. Never all of him. It was a point that filled him with a desperate frustration, and left him darker and emptier than a well in the Nevada summer.

He went to McCarran instead of New Vegas. None of the guards at the front gates worked the monorail rotation; they were rough when they patted him down, batting him this way and that with invasive hands. He turned over his weapons to them to be delivered to the monorail checkpoint, and ventured into the base.

He had a package for Sorenson; the lieutenant wasn’t at his desk, and neither was his gofer. Vulpes dropped the package between a handful of pencils and the lieutenant’s ash tray. He took one of the pencils and scrawled across the receipt: _you owe me_. It wasn’t as though Vulpes needed the caps. A favor, if it could be pressed out of the NCR officer, would be much more useful.

Leaving the tent, he traveled back up the row, invisible among the NCR troops in his plain leather armor. Nobody paid him much mind when he paused in front of the First Recon tent. The old man with the ranger hat sat in the same chair Vulpes had seen him in before, as if he’d never moved in the interim. He looked up at the fox when he noticed him lingering, and the creases on his face deepened ever so slightly with quiet dislike. Vulpes looked him in the eye and held his gaze, not proud, but unashamed. Just a wild animal in a moment of communion with mankind.

After several seconds he broke away, looking into the tent. The angry looking sniper with the goatee was gone, but Betsy and the nervous boy with the stutter were still there. The boy was cleaning his rifle with more attentive care than Vulpes would have guessed him capable of, as nervous as he seemed. Betsy was flinging darts at the poster on the tent wall. Vulpes couldn’t help but flinch as the steel tip pierced one goggled eye and the canvas behind.

She walked to the poster and retrieved her darts, yanking them free in sharp little movements. When she turned back and saw Vulpes standing there, she crossed her arms, head cocked.

“Get lost,” she said. “I don’t need any more packages from you.”

Vulpes shrugged and sidled into the tent anyway. He pulled the book from his mail bag.

“Returning what’s yours.”

“You bought it, you keep it,” she grumbled. He set it on one of the tables in the tent, and nudged it until it sat perfectly parallel to the table’s edge.

He didn’t say anything else. The book was hers; it had always been intended for her. He felt foolish in retrospect, thinking even on a whim that he’d find something useful in it, when he knew full well that there was no fixing his kind of broken.

Betsy had a support network, though. Her unit knew her and cared about her. In McCarran, she didn’t have to worry about where her meals were coming from or how nutritious they would be. She would exercise every day. In time, she might be able to face and accept whatever she was feeling, and process whatever trauma had spurred somebody to special order the book for her.

The book might help her. It seemed right, somehow, to make sure it wound up in her hands again, as though he was correcting some cosmic wrong.

When he left the tent, the old man’s faint scowl seemed to transform into something a little more grateful. It left Vulpes feeling slimy. He hunched his shoulders as he hurried along to the terminal building, mind racing with thoughts too vague and fleeting to define. Even with the book returned to its rightful owner, he felt restless. Betsy would repair her world her way; he would have to find a way of his own.

Repairing his world, his way. He trailed to a halt as he climbed the escalator, making the people behind him complain loudly before he went up the last few steps and moved to the wall to think.

His way had always been subterfuge and scare tactics, not warm fuzzy things like teamwork and community. He’d used his skills with no small success against the NCR, when they’d been at war. There was no real reason he couldn’t keep using it to keep spurring them onward. Steering them, _aiming_ them.

He pulled his mail bag around to dig through it for the notepad emblazoned with the Mojave Express logo and one of the pencils that lived at the bottom of the bag. He pressed the pad to the wall, then painstakingly wrote out a message.

_Courier is alive. Sighted near the Divide near Goodsprings. Building army of night stalkers in Ashton. Send help._

He paused for a moment as he debated whether to invent a name to sign it with or not. In the end, he left it unsigned, but marked it as originating in Goodsprings. With that, he ripped the page from the pad and began stalking down the hall towards Brigadier General Hsu’s office.

As before, he hesitated at the door before he knocked. There was a second of papers being shuffled before Hsu’s muffled voice said, “Enter.”

Vulpes let himself in. He glanced around the office as he entered; the paper brushed repeatedly at his thigh as he fidgeted.

Hsu looked more or less as he had the first time they spoke, though perhaps a bit more worn. A steaming mug of coffee rested at his elbow, and several open files laid across his desk. He flipped them shut one by one as he watched Vulpes approach with shadowed eyes.

“You’re back. You have something for me?”

Vulpes held out the note.

“Message. Pre-paid.”

When Hsu took it, he quickly withdrew, taking two steps back. He was halted by Hsu’s raised hand, silently begging his patience. The officer held the note just above the surface of the desk, frowning as he read it. He returned his attention to Vulpes.

“This is the second time you’ve warned me about the Courier, and Ashton.”

“Not my warning. I’m just the messenger.”

Hsu put the note down, and folded his hands on the desk.

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“I’m a courier,” Vulpes said with half a desperate shrug. This had been a bad decision. “I carry messages. I hear things.”

“Things about _the_ Courier.”

“Is Sorenson a spy?” Vulpes found himself asking suddenly, and he could have _smacked_ himself, but perhaps his impulsiveness was worth it for the journey of expressions Hsu went on in the next two seconds. Blank shock; consternation; blinking, open-mouthed consideration; and only _then_ composure.

“I’m not sure why you-”

“He asks too many questions,” Vulpes said, cutting him off and staring him in the eye, “and he knows too much.”

Hsu narrowed his eyes very slightly, and attempted a smile.

“Well, knowledge is power.”

“There aren’t many couriers left in the Mojave. Nobody on my circuit. Tell him to leave me alone, or I’ll start misplacing his code books.”

Hsu maintained his stony stare for a half second before it suddenly cracked, and he laughed. Vulpes blinked, perplexed, and edged a little closer to the door.

“Sorry,” Hsu chuckled, waving his hand again as he pressed a fist to his grin, head ducked. “It’s just, nobody’s talked to me like that in months. It’s kind of refreshing.”

Vulpes rested a hand on the doorknob, wary and nearly annoyed. Hsu composed himself again, though a smile still tugged at his mouth.

“Listen, Sorenson’s not a spy. He’s just on a task force that reports to me, and he’s a suspicious bastard. _Yes_ , we talked,” he continued, seeing Vulpes’ skepticism, “but it was just water cooler conversation, not whatever you think it is. If he’s harassing you, I’ll call him off, but you really don’t have to worry about it.”

The problem was, Vulpes mused as he still stood frozen in place, Hsu was a believable kind of guy, but Vulpes was, like Sorenson, a suspicious bastard. His mind chased itself in circles, trying to decide if he was being sold lies or not.

“Come on. Pull up a chair and sit for a minute.” Hsu gestured to a plastic chair pushed with its back against the office wall. “I wouldn’t mind hearing what else you’ve learned out there.”

“…I have deliveries to make,” the fox said, and he let himself out, limping towards the monorail.

* * *

He felt as though he was walking a step beside his own body as he traveled back through Freeside, toward the Old Mormon Fort. He hadn’t been entirely right since he left the book with the First Recon.

Well. He hadn’t been entirely right in a long time. He only felt particularly off kilter after leaving McCarran. He didn’t know why. Tipping off Hsu hadn’t really helped.

So he stood beside himself, watching with disinterest. His body entered the Old Mormon Fort, weighed down with more packages for the Followers, and intent on leaving lighter. His missing foot pained him; jolts rang up his body’s leg and his mind’s, tethering them in a way nothing else seemed able to. The pain was the only thing that felt real.

He drifted above the crowd and blinked owlishly down on them. When he spotted Julie Farkas’ dark mohawk, he steered his body towards her. It moved clumsily, a hunched body visibly lurching with every other step, and the question drifted uninvited through his mind: did he always look that ghoulish and feral, or was it only because the human parts of himself were currently floating ten feet off his shoulder?

Julie visibly bounced on her toes when she noticed him, her face inexplicably brightening. She handed a clipboard and a bottle of peroxide to another Follower and met him along the wall of the guardhouse.

“Good to see you again so soon,” she said, and though he was watching from far, far away, her face loomed too close. It felt like inches; her words blared in his ears, and he imagined her breath too-hot on his skin. When he flinched, twisting momentarily away from the gravity of her presence, his body flinched too.

Farkas noticed, or seemed to. She frowned slightly, _sheepishly_ , and took a half step back as she scrubbed her fingertips across one buzzed side of her head.

“You really are reliable,” she said, a bit softer. When she looked at him again, there was more space between them, and he didn’t flinch. “You’ve barely been gone a couple weeks, and here you are, back again. I have to say-”

He pulled the strings that controlled his arms and shoved the packages towards Farkas to shut her up. Her praise was only pushing him further away from himself, and it was getting harder to see. Her mouth pulled in a stressed grimace as she took the packages and looked down and away, collecting her thoughts.

“Listen,” she said, “can we go somewhere a little quieter? There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I don’t want your Med-X,” Vulpes said curtly, still observing himself from a distance, “and I don’t want your _help_.”

“I- no. No, of course, I was just… Look, you’ve been an _enormous_ help to us these past few months. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that the deliveries you made saved _dozens_ of lives. A lot of people owe you.” She laughed weakly and glanced at the ground before looking back up. “Hell, we’re literally indebted to you. I was just thinking, if you were interested, you could be a real asset to the Followers of the Apocalypse. If you wanted to join us, I mean. We… Well, I’ll be honest, we don’t have much to offer in the way of caps or resources, but we have people. Family. And you’d always have a safe place to come home to.”

She drifted into silence when Vulpes finally looked at her, honing in again. His spirit closed in on his body until he was looking over his own shoulder, peering with strange clarity into her eyes.

“…Edward Sallow was a Follower,” he said after a few seconds, uncertain why that was the first thought he voiced. It seemed to disquiet Julie, who blinked a couple times and let her mouth open, as though she was searching for words. Then, her gaze drifted to something behind Vulpes, and her face twisted with something more like horror.

“Arcade, what are you doing, put down the gun!”

His mind was yanked abruptly back into his body by a shot of adrenaline. Vulpes started, turning on the spot to see Arcade Gannon only feet away, and then he immediately wrenched his 9mm from its holster.

“Gannon,” he said, his tone cautionary, his gun leveled on the man. Gannon, in turn, had a laser pistol aimed back at him, and his hand shook just as much as Vulpes’. “Put down the gun, Gannon.”

“Arcade!” Julie scolded, looking in horror from one man to the other.

“Julie, this asshole-!” Arcade sputtered at the same time. “Do you know who he _is_?”

Vulpes laughed in angry disbelief.

“Does she know who _you_ are, _medic_?” His voice quavered; it took everything he had not to make a break for the front gates. If he did, he knew he’d be ash before he got within ten feet of it.

“Arcade!” Farkas roared, and Gannon’s full attention shifted to the lead Follower for just a second, and it was plenty of time for Vulpes to move… but not for the gates. Without thinking, he reached out with his empty hand and pulled Farkas into a rough headlock, holding her in front of him and jamming the muzzle of the pistol to her temple while she struggled in his hold. He had the courtesy to keep his finger off the trigger.

“I don’t want to kill her,” Vulpes said firmly, but the shouting had already drawn attention. People were staring; one Follower dropped the clipboard he’d been holding and vanished to get reinforcements. “Put down the gun, and I’ll leave. You’ll never see me again.”

“Ha,” Arcade barked in disbelief, shaking. “I believe exactly _none_ of that. Julie-”

“Arcade!” She choked, elbowing Vulpes in vain. “What the fuck are you doing? Put the goddamn gun down! _Let me go!_ ”

“Put the gun down,” Vulpes repeated one more time, stress making every word sharp as he hiked his elbow up a little tighter around Farkas’ throat. A few more Followers had appeared on the periphery, holding various firearms but keeping a cautious distance.

“I can’t do that.”

“I didn’t want to- _mmph!_ ”

Julie found the room to haul her foot up and mule kick Vulpes right in his bad leg, then twisted under his arm to ram a knee into his groin. His vision was reduced to a field of white static, dancing in tune with the burst of earth-shattering pain. His hold on her loosened immediately as he fell back against the wall of the fort, tears welling in his eyes and breath caught in his throat. He heard a faint whine and realized a moment later it was coming from him as he slowly curled in on himself, lifting his bad leg even as his other started to give out.

Gannon. He struggled to look up through his unwilling tears, and the only thing he could see was Julie Farkas’ white lab coat. She was standing in front of him, arms spread. Protecting him from Gannon.

“Arcade Gannon,” he heard her say, voice deadly quiet. “Put down the gun. Now.”

“Really, Julie?!”

Vulpes’ leg gave, and he slid the final two feet to the ground.

“ _Faex_ ,” he wheezed, both hands buried in his groin. He wiped his tears away on his shoulder.

“If you have something to say, Arcade,” Julie hissed, “then we can all go sit down and you can say it. But put that fucking gun away right now.” She raised her voice, projecting it. “ _Stand down! All of you!_ ” The various armed Followers that had amassed in a semicircle around them stared uncertainly for a moment longer before relaxing their guns, pointing them at the ground. Farkas glared at Gannon, and he reluctantly followed suit. Only then did she looked back under one outstretched arm at Vulpes. “Shit. Let me-”

“Don’t touch me,” Vulpes spat with no real venom, kicking some dirt at her ankles. She hovered while he gathered himself up. Gannon stood just past her. His laser pistol was holstered, but he looked anxious to draw it again. “Don’t touch me, don’t- don’t _look_ at me.”

Only when Vulpes was fully upright did Farkas reach out and grab him firmly by the upper arm. He rolled his shoulder, more a twitch of irritation and lingering panic than an attempt to detach her. Too late now, really, when half the fort was ready to put a bullet in his head. His breath came shallow and quick, and he glanced back at the gates-

“Let’s all of us go chat,” Julie said dryly, and she steered him toward guardhouse, firmly pushing him in front of her. When he stumbled, limping heavily, she had the good grace to slow down slightly. She called back to the armed Followers who had come as reinforcements. “Rodriguez, Chen- come here, please? The rest of you, back to work!”

Julie held Vulpes at the door as two of the burlier Followers stepped out of the crowd. She waved them toward the fox, and he shrank away, though Julie’s hand on his arm dug in and anchored him in place.

“Disarm him, please?”

Vulpes tried to dodge it, but one of the Followers caught him by the nape of his neck and pushed him, almost gently, face-first against the guardhouse wall. He caught himself, bracing his forearms against the rough wood, and he struggled to control his shallow, panicked breathing as all his bags and weapons were stripped from him. The hand remained at his neck, a paralyzing, uncomfortable pressure that reminded him too much of the weight of a bomb collar. When a hand began sliding down his stump leg, he jabbed an elbow back into the Follower to discourage him, hissing in pain and pulling against the hand that restrained him. All he got for his efforts was a rough shove back into the wall, holding him pinned. His brow and cheek scraped against the wood.

He was faintly aware of Julie speaking sharply to Gannon off to the side, too quietly to make out words. He turned his head in time to see her taking _his_ weapons away, too. But then, the hand at his neck guided him away from the wall, and through the guardhouse door.

The inside of the guardhouse was just an extension of outside. A few chairs were set up inside, surrounded by trays of medical supplies. A filing cabinet was shoved against a far wall, with a radio sitting on top. The room was dark and heavy with dusty heat. Vulpes stumbled in the dim light, and immediately dropped into one of the chairs. No escape from here except the door he’d come through, unless, and his eyes darted to the stairs, and wasn’t there a window up on the second floor, but- no. He was shaking too badly to even stand steady; there was no way he’d be able to make it up a flight of stairs, let alone jumping out a window and evading capture in the streets.

His attention returned to the doorway. He felt naked without his gear; he hugged his arms around his ribs as though to ward off cold as the two Followers came in after him. They were still bickering under their breath, and while they were distracted, he wriggled two fingers under a bracer to pull out the syringe of Med-X the Follower who had frisked him missed. He needed, he needed. He needed to _calm down_ , and his leg was _screaming_ from that kick. And who knew what bright new pain was coming next.

Julie leaned away from her argument with Gannon long enough to thank the two men outside. The moment the door closed, the scientists erupted again, this time at full volume.

“Julie, this man is Legion! Not- not just _Legion_ , I mean, he _is_ the Legion!”

“What in the _hell_ do you think you were doing out there!” Farkas yelled at the same time, flinging an arm toward the door. “Pulling a gun on someone in the fort!”

“Julie, you aren’t listening, _he_ _’s Vulpes Inculta!”_

Julie froze. Both she and Gannon slowly looked over at Vulpes, who was quietly shooting up. His hands were shaking so violently, it was a miracle he’d found the vein.

“What?” Julie asked Arcade breathlessly, taking a step away from him. She looked at Vulpes, and her open-mouthed shock morphed quickly into revulsion. “ _What?_ _”_ she repeated, even more sharply than before.

“Yes! Vulpes Inculta! Dogheaded fascist superspy!”

“No, I mean, _what do you think you_ _’re doing?_ ” Farkas took a few steps closer to Vulpes, mouth open, hands in the air. “Are you really doing this? Here?”

“It seemed- prudent.” He pulled the needle from his arm and tossed it into a trash bin in the corner, and untied his tourniquet of rubber tubing. “If you. If you planned on torture.”

His eyes flicked toward Gannon, who was still standing like a statue near the door. The Enclave medic was a bit older, and definitely more bookish than brutish, but Vulpes was hardly in best form at the moment and Gannon was _huge_ \- good old pre-war eugenics, spitting out an Aryan giant. Vulpes wouldn’t be escaping this without their blessings.

“Sharps go in the other can,” Farkas snapped, pointing to a different labeled bin. She rubbed a hand over her face. “We… don’t torture people here. That’s not what we do. We’re doctors. You know that.”

Vulpes shrugged dismissively, already loosening up. He sank in his chair like a liquid as the world retreated. There was nothing he could do. No point fighting it.

“Everyone wants their pound of flesh… Courier already got his.” He lifted the knee of his amputated leg a couple inches before letting his peg drop back to the floor. He continued to stare dully at Gannon. “Which piece of me do you want?”

“We’ve got to do _something_ about him, Julie,” Arcade finally said in a rush. “Vulpes Inculta!” He threw his arms to the sky with the last exclamation, nearly scraping the ceiling with his knuckles.

Julie leaned forward in her chair. She pressed both hands over her face this time, digging the pads of her fingers into her eyes.

“ _Are_ you Vulpes Inculta?” She asked without looking. Vulpes closed his eyes, too, leaning back and lifting his hands before him like a worshiper offering praise.

“I’m the cripple that _fucking_ walks,” he drawled, swearing very deliberately. “I’m no one and nothing. _Nullus sum; nihil sum, sempiterne, ad aeternum_ _…_ ”

“It’s him,” Gannon supplied in a low murmur. He leaned against the wall near Julie, arms crossed. “And you were going to invite him to join the Followers?!”

“I- how the hell was I supposed to know, Arcade? He was a courier, not a soldier, and he helped us when nobody else would! It’s not like I love learning this!” She sounded like she’d been gut punched.

“I’ve killed a lot of people,” Vulpes provided, unsolicited. The words came pouring out on their own, and he thought of that damned book. Some people have support networks. Vulpes has confession, and sentencing, and execution, and maybe that’s the only catharsis people like _him_ could expect. “Fighting almost as long as I can remember, killing. Endless killing.”

“You’re _sick_ ,” Gannon hissed. It rankled.

“Does that make me better or worse than the soldiers who aren’t sick?”

“Worse. You’re worse than all of them.”

“Worse than Caesar?” He asked with no small amount of rancor, sharp despite the influence of the Med-X. “Worse than General Oliver? _President Richardson?_ ” Oh, he knew about Richardson. His job was to know. A vicious smile twisted across his face when he saw Gannon flinch.

“Shut the fuck u-”

“I never killed children,” Vulpes interrupted, ticking points off on his fingers, “and I never killed needlessly. Even the NCR can’t say that. Did Craig Boone receive this treatment from you, too? Or do you pretend Bitter Springs never happened?”

“ _Boone wasn_ _’t a fucking officer in a genocidal army!_ ”

“No, just a foot soldier in one.”

“That’s _it_ , Julie, I’m going to-”

“Arcade…” Julie sighed heavily, flinging an arm out in front of him to stop him. She sounded tired, pained. “The Followers of the Apocalypse are an apolitical organization. You know this. We… We’ll accept anyone who works for our ideals, even if they used to be with the Legion.”

“Or the Enclave,” Vulpes breathed, and Gannon shifted slightly. Maybe he was uncomfortable with the mention, or maybe he was holding himself back from starting a brawl with a strung out amputee.

“Or any other group,” confirmed Farkas. She sucked in a breath and sat upright again, rubbing her hands over her knees. “I don’t pretend to know, or, or, _like_ what he did before he started delivering to us, or what he does when he’s not here, but he’s helped a lot of people.” Quieter, “We owe him a lot of money, Arcade, and a lot of gratitude. No matter who he is, or was.” It didn’t sound as though she liked that any more than Gannon did.

“I can’t believe this, I just can’t.”

“Nobody asked me,” Vulpes interrupted, then, “if I intended to join you.” He opened his eyes to watch them, but kept his head tilted back, throat bared. Almost proud. “I don’t.” He rubbed the pad of his thumb over a bead of blood that had welled up from the newest injection site, smearing it away. “You don’t want me to join you,” he added, so soft he could hardly be heard. Julie’s wince confirmed it.

“Damn right we don’t,” Gannon said.

“ _Arcade._ ” Julie sighed again at Vulpes. “I guess this explains your… _unique_ , opinions on who deserves charity.” She laughed weakly. “You’ve really got me over a barrel here, huh? Get me to go on and on about not caring about what our patients have done with their lives or what we’re enabling them to do, and then it turns out you’re right up there with the worst. Were you asking because you were worried how I’d act if I found out, or because you really think people should just let you die?”

“It would be the sensible thing.” He let his hand progress further down his arm, tracing the lumpy pink scar where he’d opened up his arm back in Goodsprings. He stared into the wall between Julie and Arcade. “I was built for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Uncomfortable silence fell between them. Vulpes blearily eyed the Followers, waiting to see what they intended to do with him. They both seemed preoccupied with their own thoughts. He turned his hand palm up and inspected some of the inflamed track marks that crept up near his elbow. A cloudy bruise had bloomed under his pale skin. Maybe it was time to switch arms.

“I thought the Legion banned chems,” Arcade said, breaking the silence, but his jab lacked a real edge. The argument had taken too much out of them all.

“There is no Legion.” A fleeting, joyless smile as Vulpes folded his arm inward to hide his track marks and scars, hand held near his sternum. “There are no rules.”

“So of course the first thing you do after getting out is go and shoot up like all the ‘ _profligate scum_ _’_ you’ve always hated so much.”

Vulpes scowled suddenly, and sat upright to mirror Julie. He didn’t have to take this.

“My leg rotted off,” he snapped, and then he took a second to smooth his expression into something more neutral. “If you don’t plan on torturing me,” he continued, “and _you-_ ” he looked at Julie, “have no complaints, I’ll be leaving.” On his own foot or in a box, he didn’t care.

“You’re staying,” Gannon told him, pushing off the wall and positioning himself between Vulpes and the door. “I have questions.”

Vulpes made a flippant hand gesture that could be interpreted as impatient encouragement, or any number of other things, many of them rude. He leaned back in his chair again.

“What happened to the Legion?”

“Disbanded,” Vulpes said flatly. “Caesar died during the battle. I killed Lanius; Lucius inherited the throne and… exiled me, excommunicated- he took a group back to Flagstaff with the intention of dissolving the Legion.”

“That sounds good.”

“You never saw the tribes before they were united,” said the fox, carefully bland. He felt like he was floating on a storm cloud. “There will be bloodshed. The Legion was not… kind, to its people, but it provided safety and stability to most of them. Without oversight, they will revert to the animals they were before. Just better armed, and better trained. It would be better for everyone if they were put down.”

“You’re being awfully candid. I thought you were supposed to be some ultra-loyal zealot.”

This earned Gannon a surprisingly sharp, lucid roll of the eyes.

“Why would I protect Lucius? He’s destroyed a life’s work.” Caesar’s life work, _his_ life work. “He will either lead what remains of the Legion to a quick death, or a slow and ugly one. His _only job_ was to protect Caesar, and he let him die, and he _deserted_. I held Caesar’s skull in my hand,” he said suddenly, too much under the Med-X to restrain his wandering thoughts. He lifted one hand, holding the memory of the skull in his palm. “A king, reduced to scorched bone. That is Lucius’ legacy, and Caesar’s. And mine.” He stared into his empty hand for a minute, oblivious to how the Followers shared uncertain glances and stared. His fingers curled into a fist, banishing the memory. “Too much death,” he said quietly. “Too much.”

“We can all agree on that,” Julie said pointedly.

“The Followers share the blame,” Vulpes said flatly, still staring at his fist. “Don’t pretend your hands aren’t as bloody as mine. My entire life was molded by your organization’s failures.”

“What happened to your leg,” asked Arcade, completely unmoved. “The Courier did that?” He stared in a way that made Vulpes antsy.

“Don’t. Look at it.” Vulpes shifted uncomfortably, as if there was any position he could contort himself into that would hide his stump leg from sight. “No. Yes. Inasmuch as the Courier is responsible for anything that happens around him.” He scratched his arm. “ _Hortatur et chao._ He’s a… _incitamentum_?”

“Catalyst,” Gannon provided wearily. Finally, he sat down, pulling a third chair around to form a triangle with the other two. “He says the Courier is a catalyst for chaos.”

“Arcade, I’m not going to ask how you know Latin.”

“Just as well,” Arcade muttered. “So what happened with Boone?”

Vulpes stilled; it wasn’t the stillness of a drug stupor, but of tension and unease.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, last I heard from him, he had some sort of deal with you, and then he disappeared after the battle, and now you’re here saying you had a run-in with the Courier?”

“Don’t ask me about the Divide,” Vulpes requested, quiet and small. He curled even tighter in his chair, still tense, and continued staring at his hands as he fidgeted, fingers worrying over palms and squirming in his lap.

“The Divide? Like- the road to Ashton, the Divide? What happened?”

Vulpes said nothing. His hands balled together, one clenched tight over the other. He refused to look up from them. He dug his thumbnail painfully deep into the ridge of scar tissue on his index finger.

“Right. Don’t ask about it. So for the past several months you’ve been, what? Just.. Getting high and delivering the mail?”

Vulpes finally sneered. He formed bull horns with his index and little finger and shoved them in Gannon’s direction before twisting his hand in the air and flipping him the bird. A multicultural ‘fuck you.’

“Fine. Whatever. One last question.” Arcade stood up and walked past Julie to the filing cabinet. He flicked the switch on the radio and tuned it to a station Vulpes had never heard before. “What the _fuck_ is this?”

 _-llo, hello, my beautiful Mojave. You_ _’re listening to KDVD Radio, broadcasting live from Death Valley, where the air is_ sssweet _with opportunity. In just a little bit we_ _’ll have Bible Hour with Josh, but in the meantime, enjoy this classic by the one, the only_ , The Who _._ _‘I Can See For Miles,’ and miles, and miles, and miles, and miles…_

“I don’t know,” Vulpes said, horror twisting new knots in his gut. “I don’t know.”

* * *

He was still too high and completely spooked by the time they let him leave the Mormon Fort. Gannon’s face was shriveled and tight like he’d been sucking a lemon. Farkas just looked worried.

“Would you just let me look at your leg before you go?” she still asked, though the offer was chillier than it always had been before. She pointed at where the blood was seeping through under the straps of his prosthesis, where she’d kicked him. His answer, though distracted and stilted, remained a firm “no.” He didn’t relish the idea of being stuck with anyone, literally incapable of walking away. He was particularly uncomfortable with the thought of being trapped with people who knew who he was.

Instead, he excused himself, and set a quick pace back to Westside. He wanted- he wanted his _chems_ , he wanted _guns_ , he wanted to set traps around his building. He wanted to hole up, he wanted to disappear. He wanted to run. To live. To die. To stop.

The Courier was alive and well, and he was planning something.

He ducked into an alley, scattering shadows. He bounced shoulder-first off a wall before he pressed his back to it, breathing too hard and shaking like a leaf. He clenched his fists. Unclenched. Clenched again, ragged nails scraping against his callouses. Fingertips brushing against the tough cord of scar from his first kill, so many years ago, now raw and bleeding again. His legs folded under him until he was crouched, hidden, behind an ancient dumpster. His vision swam, and the gorge rose in his throat. He swallowed it with a keening whimper.

Time passed, measured in heartbeats and rapid breaths. Eventually the bottom dropped out on his panic, leaving him tired and cold, but fractionally more collected.

He needed to find a safe spot to think. This alley wasn’t it, and neither was his roost in Westside- night stalkers can navigate city streets and climb crumbling stairs as well as any man.

Bunkers, locked doors, ladders. Even the Courier didn’t have _thumbs_ anymore.

Mmm. Vault 3? Probably reclaimed by now. He could rent a room in Vault 21, but that required getting through the security checkpoint to the Strip. It was a long way behind him at this point, and he didn’t want to risk the Courier’s attention right now.

 _Think, Decanus_.

He pushed off his knees and staggered out of the alley, leaning forward as he walked as though gravity could propel him faster and further. No vaults. Secure buildings? Casinos?

Ladders. _Ladders._

He moved with more purpose, crossing invisible borders between neighborhoods. He knew where to go. Somewhere safe, or- as safe as one could be, from the Courier.

The Thorn.

A strained smile of relief pulled at his mouth at the sight of the jagged plywood sign, vanishing as quickly as it came. The dull sound of a crowd in a lull between matches echoed up from the manhole; clusters of wastelanders stood smoking around it. They parted as he loped towards them, muttering, pointing. He ignored them, squatted down, grabbed the ladder, and swung himself into the narrow passage. Halfway down the ladder, he turned and let go, dropping sloppily onto the damp concrete below and sending a stab of electric pain through his hip. Safe.

…Safe from the Courier. He didn’t miss how the barkers looked at him, and then looked again. Two of them meandered towards each other, had a quiet conversation as they looked in opposite directions, then parted. One wove into the crowd and vanished. The other stood calmly where he was and watched Vulpes.

He gave a curt nod to the barker, then pushed through the crowd to the railing. A gap formed there for him; the two young men who had been propped up against the rail took one look at him and fled, eyes averted.

He feigned interest as the next match was announced and went underway. He leaned heavily over the guardrail; there was a solid foot of empty space to the side of either elbow. His nearest neighbors were an old man, who ignored him entirely, and a sharp eyed woman in leathers who saw him, looked at the bullet hole in the support pillar nearby, then very intently returned her attention to the pit below, where two mole rats were tearing each other apart.

Vulpes barely noticed, preoccupied as he was.

The Courier had a radio station. He and the Followers had listened to several minutes of his broadcast in the Old Mormon Fort’s guardhouse; the Followers were tense, but Vulpes had been paralyzed with fear. An old world song Vulpes had never heard before played, and then the Courier put on his best Mr. New Vegas act and reported some news from the Mojave. The Courier wasn’t just biding his time, he was listening, and he was speaking, and he was _watching_. He could see for miles, and miles, and miles.

And Joshua Graham was still alive. After the news, the audio cut to him in mid-sentence, reading fervently from his holy book. Vulpes didn’t even have the capacity to ponder that at the moment.

Top priority was survival. He couldn’t just stay in one place anymore. His routine would have to end- no more regular trips to Primm, or deliveries to New Vegas. No great loss, with his identity burnt in the Old Mormon Fort and tensions running high in McCarran. He wouldn’t want to visit the Strip at all, anymore, not with the Courier potentially puppeteering all the Securitrons.

The match below ended, to mild applause. Mole rats were low stakes. A more exciting fight was announced: man versus night stalkers, the same as the day he had his brawl. He blinked at the announcement and looked down, picking out blurry shapes in a cage in a far corner.

He was back where he started in Goodsprings; he felt the Courier’s eye on him even here, in the safety and seclusion of the Thorn. He couldn’t outrun the Courier, he could only hope to hide. But how? Turtle up in a hole somewhere, or keep moving and vanish in the crowd? The only directions he could think of going that might get him out of the Courier’s zone of influence were north or south. South, he knew, just held more desert. Perhaps before his injury that wouldn’t be a problem. Graham had gone north, back to Utah, but the Courier had found him there. No. He had to stay in the Mojave, where he at least knew the terrain. Besides, his head spun trying to predict what the Courier would expect him to do. Bluffs, double bluffs, triple- it all blended together in a panic cocktail. Better to play to his strengths than to gamble with new lands because the Courier _might_ not expect him to wander there.

The cages opened below, and he watched the same man from the previous night stalker match prowl cautiously out into the arena. A sense of foreboding fell over Vulpes; he took a moment to observe his neighbors, looking for signs of trouble. The barker had moved closer and was still watching him, but everyone else was focused on the match.

So. He would stay in the Mojave. It seemed like his only chances for staying off the Courier’s radar were to hole up somewhere safe and never come out, or to avoid Securitrons and never stop moving. Logistics alone suggested the latter was more viable, even if his leg twinged painfully at the very idea. Maybe he could find guard work with a caravan. With the help of Med-X, he’d be able to keep up with some laden-down brahmin. He could head down towards McCarran on foot, ask around there…

A burst of gunfire and a howl of animal pain rose up from the arena, and the audience erupted in a fervor. Vulped focused on the fight, and saw that two night stalkers had been struck down in quick succession. As he watched, the third and final beast decloaked and pounced on the hunter, knocking the gun from his hands as they both hit the floor. He fumbled at his belt for his knife, then, barely holding those snapping jaws away from his face, he blindly gutted the beast. Intestines spilled out onto him in a steaming heap, and the night stalker screamed and whimpered as it fell away, dragging its entrails behind it. It only made it a few yards before the hunter found his gun and put it down with a single ringing shot to the head.

The roaring audience only grew louder; the jangle of caps being distributed danced over the blare of human voices like bells. The masked hunter holstered his gun and pumped a fist in the air, turning on the spot to look up at his fans, eking more raucous cheers from those still watching. His fist dropped back to his side when he spotted Vulpes; he stood still for several seconds, staring up at him. He lifted a bloodied hand to his face and yanked down his bandanna, revealing himself. Then, he stretched out a hand towards Vulpes, first pointing, then letting all his fingers extend in a Legion salute so brief, Vulpes was certain it was lost on the other onlookers. Then, the hunter withdrew his arm again, still staring at Vulpes for a response. Waiting. Not receiving. He finally nodded, then seized a night stalker by the ankle and began dragging it out of the arena to be disposed of.

Vulpes was frozen. Even thoughts of the Courier had been banished from his mind. Because- well, it was _possible_ , but so incredibly unlikely. And yet.

But couldn’t everything in the Mojave be encompassed by _and yet?_ New Vegas, a city built in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, and that was _before_ the bombs fell. It was the birthplace of the Courier, at least in his current form. The unexpected, here, should be expected. It was a wild wasteland.

And yet. _And yet_.

He hadn’t expected to see a face from the old days peering up at him from the pit. He’d assumed his old second in command was dead, like all the others.

 _And yet_.

Gaius lived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've had an unpleasant realization that before I can finish posting this fic, there's a few things I need to take care of, and I only have a lead time of about a month before we're out of runway. This means there will likely be another brief hiatus around late June/early July. I'll keep you all posted! I promise it will be worth it in the end.
> 
> As always, thank you all so much for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos. You're the absolute best and I love you all dearly. Your support means a lot to me. <3


	15. Chapter 15

“I can’t do this,” Vulpes muttered frantically, trying to push towards the ladder up and out of the Thorn, but a deathclaw fight had just been announced, and after a few calls up to street level, dozens of people were fighting to get in to watch. Every step was hard won, fighting upstream against a heavy flow of newcomers.

Gaius was just behind him, still drenched in night stalker blood. He was largely as Vulpes remembered him- average in height and build, maybe a little more muscular than the average wastelander. Mousy brown hair peppered with gray that grew in waves when he let it get too long. Now it was cut to a few inches long and curled furiously with the damp of his sweat. His face was rectangular, with warm brown eyes and a slightly hawkish nose. His jaw bristled with a few days of growth- more than stubble, but not quite a beard. An average looking man, with a surprisingly gentle expression. That hadn’t changed, except for a few more stress lines than Vulpes remembered.

“I knew it was you,” Gaius said, eyebrows pitifully upturned. “When I saw you a few weeks ago. I knew it, but I couldn’t believe it. We all thought you died during the battle, and then there were rumors- people were talking about a three legged fox, and I-”

Vulpes instinctively flung his hand up into the _silence_ hand signal, and Gaius just as instinctively shut up. Still, he trailed after Vulpes like a puppy.

“Ere, please,” he pleaded softly. He put a hand on Vulpes’ shoulder only to have it immediately shaken off. Vulpes elbowed past what seemed to be a bachelor party and put a few feet between them for a second before Gaius caught up again. “It’s been years. Can’t we talk?”

“ _I cannot do this right now_ ,” Vulpes repeated as he reached the wall and tried to slide along it to the ladder. Gaius was openly frowning.

“Are you okay?”

Vulpes wheeled on him, and jabbed a finger in his face.

“You! Should be dead! I- _nggghh!_ ” He grimaced and slammed the bottom of his fist against the wall before shoving along, moving faster and being less polite. Too much, too much. Why couldn’t everyone just leave him alone? “ _Ghosts_ ,” he spat, eyes wide with the stress of it. Next it would be Caesar himself, rising from the grave to make his day just that much more complicated. His eyes stung. Was he crying? He thought he might be crying.

Gaius still pushed on behind him.

“ _Years_ , ere,” and Vulpes swore under his breath as Gaius continued to follow him, “I thought I would never- it’s good to see you, but… You look sick, and your leg-”

“Don’t look at me,” snarled the fox, shaking his head and refusing to look Gaius’ way. He elbowed past a pair of middle-aged men; the larger of the two turned to have words but caught sight of the murder on his face and bundled his partner into the safety of his arms instead, shoving to put space between them and Vulpes. Vulpes jammed the heel of his palm under the shelf of his brow, putting pressure on his eye before sliding his hand back enough to clench hair in his fist.

“Vulpes!” Gaius said firmly, and _loudly_ , and he grabbed Vulpes by the arm. Many faces in the crowd around them turned at the name, but it got Vulpes to turn too, eyes burning with fear and fury. The breeze flowing down from the manhole blew cold across his tear-stained face. He tried to pull his arm free, but Gaius had glimpsed the bruises that marred his inner arm, and he turned it for a better look. By the time Vulpes pulled loose, he was staring at him with renewed concern. “What _happened_ to you?”

“ _Don_ _’t_.” Vulpes took a step back, shoulder dragging along the wall. There was a territorial bellow in the arena that shook dust from the ceiling and made Vulpes flinch. The fight was about to start. Traffic at the ladder was clearing up as everyone pushed to the rails to watch.

Gaius reached out again, but Vulpes was quicker, ducking away before he could be touched. He turned his back on Gaius again and pushed sideways through another clump of spectators to finally reach the exit. When he clamped one hand on the side rail of the ladder, Gaius’ closed over his wrist.

“It’s fine if you don’t want to- to talk about it, but,” he stammered, concern written in every line of his face, “I’ll help you, if you want it. I’ll follow you again. Just. Just say the word.”

Vulpes stared at him, mouth slightly open and still a little crazy eyed. He shook his head, just a few jerky motions.

“The Legion’s done,” he said hoarsely. “Nothing left.”

“What’s the hold up?!” somebody behind Vulpes asked loudly, only to be ignored.

“What do you mean-?” Gaius started and stopped, but then he shook his head, too, eyes squeezed shut. “No, it doesn’t matter. I lived in the Legion, ere, but I never followed it. I followed you.”

“In or out, pick one!” somebody else in the crowd shouted at him.

Gaius turned on them with a flashing snarl, and bellowed “ _Wait your turn!_ _”_ with a jab of his finger at the complaining party. The pushing crowd quieted for a second as he glared at them, still bloodsoaked and suddenly startlingly fierce. His momentary aggression faded immediately, however, as he refocused on Vulpes. “I mean it. I’ll-”

“Don’t,” Vulpes repeated, and he began awkwardly climbing the ladder one-legged. Gaius hand fell limply away.

“We’ve been through a lot together, the two of us,” Gaius called forlornly after him. “I… I’m glad you made it out.” It sounded like he had planned on saying something else, only to think better of it. “If you change your mind, I’ll be here. Just say the word, ere.”

Vulpes ignored him, pressed his palms to the cool asphalt of the street, and pulled himself the rest of the way out of the manhole. This was just too much.

He wiped his face dry with the bare skin of his inner wrist, listing slightly as he walked, aiming for the nearest alley. He needed to get out of the light, and away from the people. He needed silence- _real_ silence, the kind where he could hear his own heartbeat over anything else. He needed bright lights and close quarters, with nowhere for enemies to hide.

He wouldn’t get it. The best he could hope for was the opposite: a dark hole, somewhere, where he might go unnoticed while he tried to block the world out and think.

“Too _much_ ,” he told himself, shaking his head and squidging furiously at his eyes with his fingertips. “Too much, too much…”

He walked blindly past a couple smokers who were leaning against the brick, into the alley. He stumbled over a small pile of trash and caught his balance on the wall. Caught his balance, but didn’t, because nothing was right in the world. Those he thought dead, alive. Those he thought immortal, dead. A world where tacticians become spies, and spies become couriers, and couriers become tacticians, an endless circle and _nothing ever ends, the suffering goes on forever and why can_ _’t the world just be QUIET, why can’t anybody just let him THINK and BREATHE and_

there were footsteps behind him, and acting entirely on years of training and instinct he drew his sidearm as he turned, fired three shots in quick succession into the man behind him with the knife, two more into his companion. Both fell, but the first was still miraculously struggling to get up, so he stepped in and fired another two shots into his head, and two more into his motionless friend for good measure. Movement deeper in the alley, and he spun at the sound and unloaded four more rounds into the homeless woman who’d stirred from among the ancient dumpsters at the sound of trouble. When she fell, chest perforated and half her jaw blown away, Vulpes immediately turned the gun to his own head, unthinking, and pulled the trigger.

And pulled the trigger again. And again. It clicked, the chamber empty.

Vulpes blinked in confusion at the brick wall, absently pulling the trigger one more time. Click.

His hand fell to his side. His gun fell to the ground. He continued to stare at the wall, until he found himself staring at the three fresh corpses around him instead. He didn’t know why he’d done that. His head _pounded_.

For the first time ever, he let out a roar of unadulterated rage and frustration, his voice tearing into the night, and he didn’t feel _anything_.

* * *

He retrieved his empty 9mm, and he returned to his nest only blocks away for what he assumed would be the last time. Within a few minutes, he gathered everything of value- caps, chems, ammunition, supplies- and was gone again, traveling southward on foot.

After some thought, he had left his crutches behind. More thought, and he brought his empty mail bag with.

It was late, and he hadn’t slept, but the emptiness had overtaken him and he worried that if he sat still too long, the panic would seep back in. He wasn’t tired, anyway. He kept seeing movement in shadows that sent tiny spikes of adrenaline through his system like the crack of a whip, urging him onward.

He went south, towards McCarran. It still seemed like the best plan; the area around the old airport was a nexus for trading caravans, and there was a decent chance of disappearing into the ever present crowd there. Better yet, there were no Securitrons along the way that could log his passage and report back to the Courier.

It was only a few miles’ journey, and in his hypervigilant state, he was nearly matching the pace he might have set before he lost his foot. The walk was sobering; guilt lurked around the edges of his mind as he ran his thumb over the grip of the re-loaded pistol on his belt. The two men had clearly been meaning to mug him, at least, but the woman had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It could be considered murder. He’d killed a lot of people in his time. The vast majority were casualties of war. Most of the rest had instigated the confrontation, or left him no other options. He could chalk up a lot to self defense and survival. Recently, though, he was developing a pattern. Those chem dealers and Fiends, though unfriendly, hadn’t been violent. Their deaths hadn’t been necessary. And now the woman. She certainly hadn’t been a threat.

He realized all at once that he’d lied to Julie Farkas, entirely by accident. _Before_ the Legion fell, he hadn’t killed needlessly. Now, though… now, he wasn’t quite sure what kind of person he was becoming, but he had enough of an idea to be deeply disturbed.

He shuddered, and banished the thought into the deep, sickening nothing that pooled in his head, yawning at the base of his skull.

Within a couple hours, he found himself back in trafficked lands. It was dark, but lantern-guided trains of pack brahmin lowed softly as they traveled down the streets like a funeral procession. Wary guards eyed him, shotguns half raised, but their hearts and hands were steady. As is the way with all wild things, the fox was more afraid of them than they were of him.

He found himself trailing along in the wake of the southbound caravans. McCarran was close, but they weren’t headed there- instead, they marked a route to what used to be a car dealership before the war. In the centuries after, the old cars had been hauled out or shoved aside, and the large, fenced-in lot had been repurposed as a communal campsite for the traders and caravans. Not all companies were as large and well established as the Crimson Caravan; they banded together and made do as best they could.

The humped shoulders of brahmin were barely visible over the concrete barriers and vehicles outside the chainlink, silhouetted by the campfires that burned throughout the lot. There were guards posted at the gate, and a few more barely visible against the night sky, standing on the roof of the small office building in the corner of the lot. He felt their eyes on him, but it was dark, and easier to tolerate.

“The guard pool is to the right,” a heavily armed woman manning the gate told him gruffly as he passed by. “No funny business,” she called after him.

He could see, now, that the inside of the lot was segregated. The traders, their goods, and their livestock were happily situated in a heavily fortified camp on the interior of the lot, doubly fenced, doubly guarded. To the right, occupying a corner of the lot cluttered with debris presumably ejected from the nicer traders’ campsite, were a dozen or so rough looking hired guns. Most bristled with weaponry; all gave the distinct impression that they didn’t want to be bothered. Some looked to be professional caravan guards, looking for work with a new company, but others seemed too rough-and-tumble. Probably fresh from the battlefield, themselves, though from the war-front or gang terf, who could say.

After a moment taking in the rest of the camp through the chain link (several different caravan companies, huddled together around a few different fires, their cattle all mixed together in a herd that murmured and complained as they chewed at what little pathetic grass they could find poking up through the cracked asphalt) Vulpes moved to the corner filled with mercenaries. Those still awake registered his arrival, but paid him little mind, and he politely ignored them in return. Weary, he lowered himself onto the ground a distance away from the others to lean back against the flat tire of a half-crushed car. He tucked his pack safely under the crook of his knees, sat on his sniper rifle, and cradled his assault rifle in his arms.

When he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend it was a Legion campsite, filled with the crackle of fire and the low mutter of casual conversation nearby.

* * *

Morning came, and with only a few hours of sleep under his belt, Vulpes woke and got moving. Caravans would start leaving soon; if he wanted to insinuate himself in one of them, he would need to be up and ready.

Unfortunately, in daylight, his competition cut much better figures than he did. The other mercs were all real scrappers, built of lean muscle and ribbons of scar tissue and sharp smiles with more than a few missing teeth. A few were already on their feet by the time Vulpes found his, stretching in the pale morning light and bandying dark jokes at each other. Gallows humor. There was a time when he would have been able to keep up their repartee, but that time was past. He ignored them, instead discretely injecting a fresh syringe of Med-X before standing and getting his gear together.

“Look who came in the night!” One of the hopeful guards laughed nearby, clapping the shoulder of a burly bearded ginger who grinned in return. The night arrival nodded at a woman behind his friend, who was unashamedly pulling on her pants and strapping on a gun belt.

“Looks like I’m not the only one who came in the night, hm?” He chuckled as the women flipped him the bird.

“At least he came in something! You gotta’ give your poor hand a break, Rog, or your fingers are gonna’ shrivel up and stick that way,” she mocked with accompanying lewd hand gestures, making him laugh even harder.

“Good to see you too, Katie.” Roger turned a half circle to stand at his friend’s side, and he elbowed him lightly. “What’s the pickings, bud?”

“Hard to say,” the first man mused, humor fading as the topic turned to business. Vulpes kept his ears open as he dug some dried barrel cactus fruit out of his pack, standing with his hip braced against the car. “Kate and I only got in yesterday. At least three caravans, maybe a couple more? Hope so, anyway,” the man said, looking around at the rest of the guard pool with some concern. “Gonna be some fierce competition if there aren’t.”

“Eh, maybe not,” Roger countered, unconcerned. “I know some of these folks. That lot over there-” he nodded at a cluster of men leaning against the chain link and smoking, “are ride or die. They all get hired on together, or they don’t sign. Improves our odds a bit. Any idea what companies are here?”

“Whiskey Rose is back in the saddle,” Kate chimed in, stepping lazily up to the men. She arched her eyebrows skeptically. “No idea how that happened, but I’m not gonna’ sign with her unless she pays double rates.”

Both men grunted; The as-yet unnamed man with the long dark hair threw in a shrug for good measure.

“You can’t seriously be considering it,” the woman said, cocking her head as she propped her hands on her narrow hips.

“I have to agree with the lady, Yiska,” said Roger as he scratched at his wiry beard and looked around the camp. “You know her track record.”

Yiska shrugged again, exaggerating a bemused frown.

“Caps are caps. And I always know when to cut and r- here we go, guys!”

He cut off mid-sentence to point to the inner gates opening, and bounced eagerly on his toes.

“Look reliable,” Kate advised with a rakish grin, broadening her stance and hooking her thumbs in her belt. All around, the other would-be guards did the same. The bunch near the fence flicked the butts of their cigarettes away and mosied over to the rest of the group, now clustering along the path from inner gate to outer. Vulpes limped a little closer, but lingered at the outskirts of the group.

The first of the caravans emerged, and it was big- seven brahmin, with only three company men. From the crowd of mercenaries, a couple hollered out greetings, by name, and pushed to the front.  The traders grinned, happy to see old friends again. Pleasantries were traded, hands were shaken, and before long the  guards and the traders were spurring their pack animals out of the camp together.

Vulpes watched with a frown. There were grumblings from within the crowd, and mutters of “nepotism.”

The process repeated two more times; traders emerged, picked a few familiar, eager faces from the guard pool, and struck off in the morning light. The dozen or so remaining mercenaries ranged from concerned to irritated. Many of them craned their heads to peer in through the gates to the inner camp, held back by the armed guards who patrolled the line, maintaining a wide enough gap for the caravans to pass by.

After a few more minutes of anxious waiting, two brahmin weighed down heavily with goods came waddling out, accompanied by two women and a man. The woman in the lead looked wiry and tough; she wore a straw hat that shaded bold red hair, freckles, and fine lines that suggested she was older than the rest of her appearance suggested.

At the sight of her, the ride-or-die gang of mercs jammed together in one corner of the group hooted and jeered, words lost under their own noise.

“Laugh it up!” the woman barked easily. “I’m hiring on two more hands, westward bound for the Mojave Outpost, and beyond.”

A dozen fighters looked down at their feet, kicking up little dust clouds as they twisted their toes in the dirt. A few more cynical laughs burst from the rear of the group. Nobody volunteered. Vulpes frowned as he looked from the woman to his competition, one troubled face to another. Something was going on here that he didn’t understand, and it left him wary. There was a reason they didn’t want to work with this woman. It might be in his favor; this might be his only chance of traveling with company, increasing his security and throwing the Courier off his scent. Then again, if she got him killed, it defeated the purpose.

“Come on, I’m paying half up front, half when we get there, with a combat bonus,” the woman tried again, a hint of grim frustration making itself heard.

“Make some room!” a voice barked, and another caravan shuffled up past the redhead’s, pressing just past. The man who’d called out pointed to the waiting crowd, which erupted in a frenzy of waved hands and solicitations. “I’m taking on four men, headed north! We’re the last ones, folks, it’s me or Rose of Sharon!”

The calls got louder and more insistent. As Vulpes watched, Kate’s mouth moved in inaudible swears and she shouldered through to the front of the pack.

“How’s about women?” she asked brusquely, keeping a wide stance and a steely eye. The caravan leader gave her a once-over and nodded, waving her to his party.

“You’re in! Three more,” he cried out, even as the band of allied mercs peeled away from the rest, muttering and lighting up cigarettes as they stalked out of the campsite in a pack. The competition was thin, only a handful of hopefuls left, and Vulpes gritted his teeth as he stepped forward, inserting himself more readily into the running.

“Two more hands!” The red-headed woman- Whiskey Rose- tried again, only to be ignored. Kate muttered something in her new boss’s ear before moving around the lead brahmin to introduce herself to the incumbent caravaneers.

“You- ginger with the beard!”

“Yessir,” Roger barked out with a lopsided grin, flipping a haphazard salute off his brow with two fingers before moving across the line to join him.

“How about- you, long hair, with the shotgun?”

The finger was pointed at Yiska this time, who smiled and shook his head.

“Thank you kindly, but I’ll let someone else have it.”

“Come on!” the man barked, briefly throwing his hands into the air. “I ain’t takin’ the _cripple_ , so who _does_ want the goddamn job?”

Vulpes’ shoulders tensed and his skin prickled as attention shifted to him for the first time since he’d arrived in the camp. He worked diligently to ignore the sudden murmurings, and the word choice-

“I wouldn’t advise you calling him that, sir,” Yiska piped up again, making Vulpes stare at him with surprise and suspicion. His tone was carefree- that of a man offering friendly advice from a safe distance. “He can handle himself.”

“Don’t care. Two more! Fuck it- you, and you,” the man decided at random, stabbing his finger at two of the remaining mercenaries. “Now let’s get the fuck moving, time’s a-wastin’!”

The brahmin let out a two-voiced bellow as the man tugged on its halters, urging it forward. Slowly, the caravan filtered out the gates with its retinue of guards, leaving the campsite vacuously empty. The few other snubbed guards looked wistfully on their exit, and with just a brief troubled glance to the redheaded woman still standing in stalwart frustration beside her head brahmin, they trailed out after them. Only Vulpes and Yiska remained. The redhead’s two companions silently held the animals, eyebrows raised as they shot each other looks.

“What do you say, fellas,” Whiskey Rose said gruffly. “Are you game, or do we all leave losers?”

“Double the pay, and I’m your man,” Yiska said easily, without bothering to hide how he stared at Vulpes. It didn’t seem aggressive; his eyes were sleepy, his attention lazy. Still, Vulpes turned sideways against the attention, narrowing his profile and shielding his stump from view behind his other leg.

“I’ll double your combat pay. It’s the best I can do,” the woman told Yiska, completely frank. She turned her attention to Vulpes. “What about you? Are you any good with that rifle?”

“No,” he growled on impulse, unthinking, “I carry a thirty pound rifle around for fun.”

“Ha ha,” she said dryly. “You coming, then?”

Vulpes hesitated, and this aggravated Rose of Sharon’s irritability.

“You think anybody else in this damn desert is going to give you a chance? It’s me or nothing. Which will it be?”

“…Why,” Vulpes asked, “is everyone avoiding you?”

“You live under a rock or something, man?” Yiska asked quietly, leaning closer and speaking out of the side of his mouth. “Every caravan guard and trader from Death Valley to the Grand Canyon knows about Whiskey Rose.”

“I had a recent change of career,” Vulpes growled back as an excuse.

“Don’t call me Whiskey Rose,” the woman said at the same time. “The name’s Cassidy. Cass for short.”

“If you don’t call me a cripple,” Vulpes countered. He glowered briefly at Yiska, who made a _what_ _’re you looking at me for?_ face and gesture, with splayed fingers and a shake of his head. “Why were they avoiding you.”

Cass sighed heavily, and kicked a clod of dirt with the toe of her cowboy boot.

“Because they’re paranoid idiots,” she said bluntly. She grimaced at him. “I had a streak of bad luck and now they say I’m cursed.”

Vulpes locked stares with her for a moment, then looked over at Yiska to gauge his response. He was smiling strangely, as though there was some secret joke he was struggling not to laugh at, but he didn’t dispute Cassidy’s claims.

Vulpes exhaled, and looked out to the desert. The other caravans were already out of sight behind nearby buildings.

“I’ll go as far as the Mojave Outpost,” he said. “No further.” He didn’t want to go west at _all_ , but he didn’t have much choice. He had to vanish, _now._

“Deal.” Cass stretched a hand out, but Vulpes didn’t shake it. After a moment, she shook her head and instead pointed at Yiska. “Are you in?”

“Yeah,” Yiska replied with a shrug. “Got nowhere better to be. It might make for a fun story, if nothing else.”

“As long as your idea of fun includes force-feeding bullets to bandits.” She gestured to her silent companions. “This is Cookie,” Cass said, referring to the man. He was middle aged, with skin nearly the same shade of tan as his hair, and impressive muttonchops under his black stetson. “Caravan bookkeeper, animal handler, and, well, cook.”

“Real creative,” Yiska remarked.

“I was Cookie before I was a cook,” Cookie said. “Name’s Cuccurullo.”

“And this,” said the woman in charge, gesturing to the broad-shouldered woman holding the lead brahmin steady, “is Monique. She’s a guard as well.”

That much was obvious. The woman was clearly strongly built, and Vulpes could see at least two knives and a shotgun on her. Monique caught him looking her over and stared flatly back. Placid, but clearly confident in her ability to win a fight.

“Yiska,” Vulpes’ new colleague offered, and he shook hands with Cass, Monique, and Cookie in turn.

“What about you?” Monique spoke up, her voice raspy and low. She ran a hand through the tousled fur of one of the brahmin’s heads, to rest at the base of its sharply curved horn. “You got a name?”

Vulpes hesitated for a moment, then sighed.

“Noah.”

* * *

It was fortunate, Vulpes decided, that Cookie was as talkative as Yiska, because it left the other three to walk in relative peace, provided they could tune out the chatter behind them. Now and then, Cass would join in on the conversation, making a comment here or there between taking discrete swigs from a flask tucked down the front of her shirt. She paid little attention to Vulpes. She’d let his brusque attitude go with minimal comment; he wondered how much of that was because she was slightly drunk and entirely desperate. All he had to do was just pointedly ignore her attempts at conversation, and she eventually gave up.

Monique and Vulpes didn’t talk. They just walked, and kept their eyes on their surroundings.

Things stayed quiet, and eventually night fell. They left the road to set up camp, hitching the complaining brahmin to an ancient guard rail for the night and unloading their burdens so they could rest. Cookie started a fire while the rest of them moved small crates and sacks from the cattle to the ground.

Vulpes excused himself for a moment under the guise of nature’s call. Instead of taking a piss, he stood thirty yards away from the camp and shot up with his back to the fire, navigating his own collapsed and weeping veins by the glow of the Courier’s PipBoy.

He returned in time to shift the last of the cargo, and then Cookie was shoving a metal bowl of some sort of stew into his hands.

The others gathered around the fire as they ate. As he watched, Cookie sank down to sit on a crate between Monique and Cass, still deep in pleasant conversation with Yiska, who never seemed to run out of amusing anecdotes or the desire to share them. Even Monique was laughing along, and sharing the occasional thought.

A spot, he noticed, had been left for him.

He limped away from the group to stand at the outer limits of the firelight, looking out into the impenetrable darkness. During the day he found it easy enough to ignore the suspicious blurs of movement in his peripheral vision, when there were others present who didn’t see them. At night, however, it was too easy to believe that anything could be out there, watching, waiting. A deathclaw could be standing fifteen feet away and he wouldn’t know unless it wanted him to.

He wished, just for a moment, that the others in the caravan would be quiet and let him listen to the night. He’d gotten used to solitude, and the abject silence that came with it.

 _Safety in numbers,_ he reminded himself, poking at his stew. More eyes, more hands, and more weapons meant more safety. He had to vanish into the banal. Living like he had been and traveling alone was too _remarkable_ , in the most literal sense possible. He had to be forgettable instead. Completely invisible.

If only he could pull the desert around himself like a cloak, the way the night stalkers did.

“Nice night,” Yiska’s voice came suddenly from far too close behind him. Vulpes spun on the spot, nearly drawing his knife and lashing out with it on impulse. Yiska seemed to notice; he took a quick step back and put on a bright, sycophantic smile.

“Hate to bother you, friend, but I have been _itching_ to talk to you one on one since I clapped eyes on you this morning. You, are, _famous_ ,” he said, pausing between each word and letting his index fingers meet his thumbs to throw double a-ok’s at Vulpes.

None of this did anything for Vulpes’ nerves; he stepped further away from the guard and slipped his hand from knife to pistol. The a-ok’s dissolved into frantic little hand waves.

“Whoa, whoa, I’m not trying to pick a fight or anything. Not with you. Roger- that’s the beefy bearded guy I was with back at the camp- Roger and I were there at the Thorn; we saw how you wrecked Thaniel Wilcox first hand. That was a _fine_ piece of work, even if I did lose ten caps betting on that sumbitch.” He leaned in slightly, grinning conspiratorially. “He was a guard too. Wilcox has his friends in this trade, but I ain’t one of them. He got what was coming, and his, uh, _unfortunate_ injuries and his pal’s little fatal fall mean less competition when it comes to guard selection. If, you, uh,” he continued, glancing intermittently at Vulpes’ hands, “if you were the hand shaking type, I would shake yours, but I seen  that’s not your style.”

Vulpes continued to stare in silence. He was doped and tired and paranoid and this man was altogether too friendly and speaking too fast for Vulpes to comfortably process in real time.

“You know, we never had a proper introduction. Name’s Yiska. What’s your name?”

His smile still felt a little too plastic for Vulpes’ sensibilities.

“…Noah.” The name meant nothing to him, but after all his visits to McCarran he was used to using it, even if he didn’t care for it. He’d work on it later. Or never. It didn’t matter. People came, people went, he never saw them again.

( _People just keep reappearing though, lately, his mind helpfully reminded him, before he stomped it back down into submission.)_

“Funny thing is, you don’t sound too sure. C’mon now. What’d your momma call you?”

“Boy,” Vulpes said flatly. This one wasn’t a lie. When she did call him by a name, it often belonged to one of his half-siblings, or his father. Sometimes he wondered if anyone other than Sissy had actually known his name. Sometimes he wondered if Sissy had _given_ him his name, when she noticed everyone else seemed to have forgotten to. He was among the youngest of so many children in the tribe; he always suspected they eventually just stopped keeping track.

“Huh,” Yiska said. He blinked, and smiled appeasingly again. “I only ever heard you called the Cripple Who-”

“Don’t.”

“Ah. Yeah. What’s the other one they call you? Tripod Fox or something?”

“How many people are _talking_ about me?” Vulpes grumbled rhetorically, shaking his head all the while. “No. Don’t call me that.” _Don_ _’t call me anything, don’t talk to me, don’t talk about me, don’t_ look _at me._

“How’s Trip, then? It’s better than Tripod Fox. Dumb fucking name, anyway, no offense.”

Vulpes shook his head again, and turned away from the chatty man, limping without any real reason around the camp’s perimeter. To his exasperation, Yiska followed, seemingly unaware that he wasn’t very welcome.

“That’s a nice rifle you got,” the man commented. Vulpes ground his teeth as he turned to hide his weapons behind his body, but this put him face to face with Yiska again. “Say, you weren’t ever with the NCR, were you?”

“No,” Vulpes mumbled, pacing along the edge of the darkness, Yiska close on his heels, one finger held pensively in the air.

“It’s just,” he said, pulling a thoughtful face that seemed less than genuine, “I _swear_ I saw you at the Dam. NCR hired a fuck ton of us as mercenaries for the fight. Money was too good to say no. Kate and I were second string; we didn’t see any action, but, you know. We _saw_ the action. They had us in the bluffs as backup. Then the night stalkers showed up, and Kate and I booked it.”

Vulpes ignored him. He stared unblinking into the flat black of the desert until his data-starved brain projected dancing lights for him to watch.

“Thing is, though,” Yiska continued, standing closer, letting his voice drop a little lower, “I don’t remember seeing you with the other mercenaries. I do remember seeing you with a sniper rifle, though. Wearing a ranger duster.”

“I wasn’t there.” Vulpes frowned briefly at Yiska. “You’re mistaken.”

Yiska grunted, clearly unconvinced but uninterested in pushing the conversation any further.

“Alright then. Alright. I just thought I’d come make some friendly conversation, is all. I’m guessing you’re taking first watch, so just wake me up in a few hours.”

Yiska threw a few puzzling looks over his shoulder as he returned to the campfire and rejoined the conversation. Vulpes ignored them, and stared into the night.

* * *

Yiska discovered that Cookie had a radio, the next day. It wasn’t long before he’d rigged it to hang from a strap off one of the brahmin’s sides, blaring its tinny noise. At news and commercial breaks, he changed the station, fussing incessantly with the dial to find music rather than talk radio.

Inevitably, he soon settled on KDVD. Vulpes tried hard not to visibly stiffen as songs he’d never heard before with lyrics like portents streamed from the speakers. He was losing his patience by the fourth song.

 _I_ _’m a sick man- a very sick man. I don’t expect you to understand._

The twanging guitar and anxious male vocals made his eyes twitch nervously over the horizon, his assault rifle clutched in tense hands.

After a few more lines the tune shifted to something more aggressive, and he noticed Cassidy wince, too, out of the corner of his eye.

 _Creep up behind you when you fill with hate.  
I get excited when you're irate.  
I make you crazy, make your conscience numb.  
I've got the anger gonna _get you some _-_

“Turn that garbage off,” Cassidy requested, making a face of distaste. Yiska either didn’t hear her, or ignored her, not taking her word as command. His head bobbed slightly with the beat.

Vulpes focused on controlling his breathing, and ignoring the mirages that played in the scrub.

Breathe in. You see nothing.

_You will become me._

Breathe out. You hear nothing.

_You will become me._

His hold on the rifle tightened, and he had to consciously adjust his grip to ensure it wouldn’t accidentally discharge. The song continued, and as hard as he worked to tune it out, all he could hear was the Courier’s voice in his ear.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Don’t shoot your foot. Nothing in the desert. Breathe in. Breathe out.

The song dissolved abruptly into a cacophony of chanting, and Vulpes missed a step, staggering sideways as he flinched.

_-MASK OF WATER LAMENTS BORN OF DARKNESS BROTHERS WE ARE SWORN YOU MAKE US STRONG WHEN WE ARE WEAK YOU ARE THE ONLY TRUTH WE SEEK YOU ONLY TO FORGET THE HOLLOW MEN WE HAVE BECOME-_

“Turn it off,” Cassidy repeated, a little more sharply, voice raised above the radio.

“This is some weird shit,” Yiska admitted, frowning at the radio. “Probably why Mr. New Vegas sticks to the classics, huh.”

“Come on, now, Yiska,” Cookie warned, unhappy. Monique grimaced at the guard disapprovingly.

The chant continued all the while, echoing violently in Vulpes’s skull. He gritted his teeth, and turned on his heel. He was going to kill him, he was going to-

-breathe in-

“Turn it off _, now_ ,” he snarled, absently pointing his rifle at the man, just as Cass all but yelled “Turn it the fuck off!”

_-HORROR OF THE NAKED TRUTH IS ONLY WHAT YOU MAKE IT DO THE THINGS YOU WANTED TO COMPLETE THE ANIMAL THAT HAS TO EAT THE INNOCENTS ARE LEFT-_

Click. Silence.

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ,” Yiska breathed, glancing nervously from Vulpes to Cassidy. One hand was still on the radio’s power switch. The other was tentatively raised in the air, a silent bid for Vulpes not to shoot him. “It’s just some fucking music.”

“The radio stays off,” Vulpes said, rifle still raised, and Cassidy didn’t object.

“Jesus,” Yiska repeated. “Fine.”

Vulpes lowered his rifle. The caravan moved forward again. Vulpes let it slowly amble by, staring unblinking at Yiska as he passed within arm’s reach, and he took up a position at the rear. All the better for keeping an eye on things.

The atmosphere stayed chilly and the conversation remained dead until that evening’s supper, when Cookie broke the ice with an old story from his days in Mexico, but Vulpes didn’t forget. He could still hear the chanting, ringing in his ears.

He wondered if the Courier knew he would be listening.

He wondered if, maybe, this had been a very bad idea.

* * *

He sat with his back to the smoldering remains of the fire, legs crossed at the ankle and peg, with arms wrapped loosely around his legs. It wasn’t his turn to stand watch, but he couldn’t sleep. He kept imagining disjointed music in the breeze, and it kept him twitching at the slightest noise well into the night.

Cookie snored throatily from his sleeping bag on the other side of the small camp, and Yiska was silently curled up among the bags and crates taken off the brahmin for the night. He was barely visible, except for the odd limb poking out from the merchandise. Cass was propped against the side of a sleeping brahmin, her hat pulled down over her face and an empty bottle at her side.

Monique slowly walked circles around the perimeter of the camp, far enough out of the light that her night vision was intact. Vulpes tracked her movement by the soft rhythm of her footfall, setting the beat for the ghastly music in his head.

Monique paused in her circuit; he couldn’t see her in the dark, but her footsteps had stilled. The new quiet wove a thin veil of dread which settled gradually over Vulpes’ shoulders. He tensed where he sat, breath bated, until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He shoved himself awkwardly upright and stumbled in the dark to Monique’s side, blindly honing in on the point where the footsteps had stopped. The further he got from the burnt down remains of the fire, the more his eyes adjusted to the dark, and when he drew up beside Monique he could see her nodding in greeting.

“It’s not your watch,” she said, her voice muted. “You should sleep.”

He grunted dismissively in response, peering out into the darkness for whatever had brought Monique to a halt.

“Coyotes,” she explained, instantly understanding. She leaned towards him slightly so that when she pointed, he could more accurately follow the angle of her arm to the quietly shifting shadows in the desert. “Just a small band of them. A mother and three or four yearling pups.”

“You sound certain,” Vulpes murmured unhappily. He squinted at the moving shapes, but couldn’t make out much more detail than just the vague suggestion of four legs and fur.

“Not much else it could be.” If she was at all annoyed with Vulpes’ paranoia, she didn’t show it. “What were you expecting?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he sullenly tracked the movement of the creatures. They showed no interest in the camp, instead skirting well around it and heading northward into the waste.

“It would do everyone some good, you know, if you told us what you were running from,” Monique continued, her voice still calm and low. “I’m not judging, but I’d rather not die, either.”

“I’m not running from anything.”

“Uh-huh.” Vulpes heard a smile behind the grit, and scowled, still watching the coyotes. “You just jumped right on board with our caravan for the hell of it.”

“I needed the caps.”

“Like hell you do.” Still utterly calm. “Your gear’s good. Seen some action, but good, and expensive. I don’t know if you paid for it with caps or blood, but you didn’t sign on with _Cass_ at discount because you’re broke. And _she_ only took _you_ because she’s desperate. I’m not sure which says more about the situation.”

“Maybe I spent all my caps on my gear,” was his deadpan response, and then, steering the conversation away from himself, “If she can’t pay in full, why are you here?”

“I needed the caps,” Monique joked, smiling a little more broadly. Her grin was shockingly bright in the dark, reflecting the crescent moon above. She brushed her dreads off her shoulder. “No. Cass was the only caravan owner who would take me on back when I was young and stupid and useless with a gun. I’m not any of those things anymore- well, I’m definitely not young or useless with a gun- so when I heard she hit hard times, I wanted to repay the favor.”

They stood in comfortable quiet for several seconds, taking in the night. The coyotes had vanished into the scrub, wandering away from the camp. Vulpes let his attention drift aimlessly over the broken earth like a tumbleweed.

“If you don’t want to tell me anything, that’s fine.” Her mischievous grin had softened into a mild, closed-lip smile. “We all have nasty business behind us. That’s how life is out here. But if you’d give us some warning if it starts catching up, I’d appreciate it.”

Vulpes hummed a vacant affirmation. He wasn’t paying attention. He held his head slightly cocked, staring at a point in the darkness. He thought he’d heard something, but…

“Something out there?”

Nothing moved in the night except the air, blowing up tiny clouds of dust as it swept across the dirt and brush. Monique pulled the shotgun off her back and held it low as she took a few cautious steps further out of the camp, following his gaze. Vulpes exhaled heavily with frustration as he felt for his own weapons, and remembered he only had his sidearm on him. He drew it, ready for anything.

Monique reached the point in the dark where Vulpes thought he’d heard the noise. She moved slowly through the area, stepping over low, sprawling cacti. When nothing turned up, she bent slightly to inspect the dirt. She looked up at Vulpes and shrugged.

He only holstered his gun again when she was back on the edge of the firelight.

“Some pawprints,” she said, “but nothing else. Probably those coyotes that came through earlier.”

Vulpes stared silently out at the spot, unmoving, as Monique finally began her circuit again.

Coyotes. Yes. Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Gaius is calling Vulpes "ere", the vocative form of "erus" which means owner/master/boss... but also sweetheart. Is he just a really obedient soldier, or does he have a really unfortunate crush? Who knows! Regardless, I want to make it absolutely clear that this is a gen fic and will remain a gen fic. Vulpes won't be getting mushy feelings or boning anyone here.
> 
> The song in this chapter is ["Shadow Self" by Kevin Gilbert](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z8SKYCqRwE). It's as jarring to listen to as it is to read.
> 
> Thank you all, as always, for reading this fic and leaving kudos and comments. I love and appreciate you all so much!


	16. Chapter 16

“So tell me,” Cass slurred, as they were continuing westward the next day, “why did you say no to the other caravan? He was offering a better deal than me; we both know it.”

She was walking on the opposite side of a brahmin from Yiska, peering half-drunk at him over two pairs of recurved horns. Cookie guided the brahmin in front of them; Monique was on point, and Vulpes took up the rear.

“He’d already taken on Kate,” Yiska said with half a shrug. “We prefer to keep our work and play separate when possible. We don’t work the same caravans.”

“So this Kate is your lady friend.”

Yiska guffawed, eliciting a conversational grunt from the brahmin. He reached out to scratch behind its ear.

“Ha, no. Well. I think she’d have something to say about being called a lady, _or_ my friend. We’re just, uh… physically acquainted. Once words get involved, it always turns into arguments, so we try to keep our quality time, um, conversation-free. If you get me.”

“Huh. More power to you, I guess.” Cass took another swig from the small brown bottle, and shoved it back into her waistband. She was tipsy enough that she had either stopped hiding it, or was getting very sloppy in her attempts. She was still sure-footed, though, when she half turned to blink back at Vulpes.

“What about you, Trip? What got you into the guard business? You said that you were new to this. Seems like a dumb choice for a guy with one leg.”

Vulpes scowled openly. He didn’t love that Yiska’s little nickname had caught on in the caravan, and he didn’t like how flippantly she judged his ability.

“Better than traveling alone,” he grumbled honestly, scanning the desert around them for signs of danger that would rescue him from social niceties.

“I just wouldn’t expect you to be traveling at all, in your condition.”

“What condition?” Vulpes asked, honing an edge to the flatness of his tone, daring her.

It went right over her head.

“You’ve got one leg,” she repeated, as though she thought _he_ was the idiot. He found himself grinding his teeth so hard, he was shocked nobody else commented on the noise.

“And you’re a drunk,” he countered, “but it doesn’t seem to impact your efficacy as a caravan owner, so I _didn_ _’t feel the need to comment on it_.”

“Yeesh. Rude.” Cass mirrored his frown. Yiska, he noticed, was very deliberately focused on the pack animal in front of him. His body language loudly suggested that he _definitely_ wasn’t listening, and was absolutely not a part of this conversation anymore.

“Yes,” Vulpes agreed, still glowering at Cass. “Rude.”

“Hey, Cass?” Monique called from the front of the caravan, drawing everyone’s attention. She pointed out across the desert to a series of small, dark blobs shimmering in the distance. “I think we have company. Hard to say for sure.”

Vulpes squinted at the shapes, fumbling for his sniper rifle. He came to a halt as he lifted it, peering down the scope to see them more clearly.

“What is it?” Yiska asked him, all business. Vulpes kept his eye to the scope as he responded.

“Men. Ten or so.” He didn’t mention that some of them still wore scraps of red that they apparently hadn’t been able to replace with non-faction armor. From this distance he couldn’t tell their ages, or the quality of the weapons they carried, but he guessed that they were mostly young, inexperienced, and working with inferior equipment. Like all who left the Legion, they likely left with what they wore on their backs, and nothing more.

Hsu _had_ mentioned Legionaries hitting caravans. He grimaced behind his rifle.

His brevity and the contemplative silence that followed didn’t sit well with the rest of the caravan. The brahmin were slowed to a halt, and Cass put her hands on her hips, standing at Vulpes side as she squinted out at the shapes.

“Well? Are they a threat, or no?”

“Hard to say,” Vulpes said, echoing Monique. They did seem to be walking this way, but they weren’t acting like any sort of military unit or raiding party. The little detail he could glean suggested exhaustion more than anything else. “Probably not.”

“We’ll just keep an eye on them for now, then,” the redheaded woman said, chewing at her chapped lips for a second before patting the brahmin’s flank and leading it onward again.

The sighting had well and truly killed the conversation, and if nothing else, Vulpes was grateful for that. He kept an eye on the ex-Legionaries, though, the same as all the others in the caravan. It might have been his eyes playing tricks, but he thought they were getting closer. Every couple of minutes, he paused to take another look down the scope.

Yeah. They were getting closer. They weren’t walking directly toward the caravan, but the oblique angle they traveled would lead them on a collision course.

“I don’t love the idea of them following us,” Cass commented darkly as she checked her guns and took extra ammunition from a bag strapped to the brahmin to tuck in her pockets.

“We can’t know if they’re actually following,” Vulpes barely heard Monique say from up front. “We can be ready for that, though.”

“Just give me some warning before you start shooting,” grumbled Cookie. “I always saw myself dying at a ripe old age in a New Vegas hotel room from a heart attack, surrounded by beautiful women. Not out in the middle of the desert like a dog getting put down.”

Yiska shrugged nonchalantly, cool as a cucumber.

“I kind of always just figured I’d get shot by some jackass hopped up on Psycho. This seems on brand, for me.”

Vulpes lifted his rifle again, and looked out at the approaching party, then froze. The caravan traveled on without him. The other party was finally getting close enough to make out some detail, and Vulpes realized suddenly that he recognized the man in front.

“Cato,” he murmured to himself. Huh. He hadn’t expected that. The realization felt hollow and dull.

“What?” The caravan had paused about fifteen feet away, and Cass was squinting suspiciously at him. “Do you know those people? What is this- are you _involved_ in something? I knew bargain bin guards were a bad idea…”

Vulpes lowered his rifle to blink at her, perplexed for the briefest moment.

“I’m not involved in anything. But I know him. The one in front.” Feeling twitchy, he peered down the scope again.

Cato Hostilius, alive and well, wearing civvies under his plain armor and his trademark bandanna around his forehead.

Vulpes hadn’t thought of Cato once between the Battle at the Dam and now. Granted, he didn’t care to think about Cato. In many ways, Cato was a much better frumentarius than him. A much better assassin. He had _people_ skills. He could talk plain and unaffected, and blend into any crowd. People liked him. People trusted him. And he was reliable, and deadly, but not bloodthirsty. He killed when necessary, but otherwise avoided violence when possible. The only thing he had always lacked was _imagination_. If not for that, Vulpes might have wound up on the cross all those years ago, and Cato might have found himself at Caesar’s left hand.

His presence could mean anything, or nothing. Was he still loyal to the ghost of the Legion? To Lucius? To _Vulpes?_ They had certainly never been friendly, but their professional relationship had been stable, if chilly. And with so many in his group… What was he doing out here?

Suspicion gripped Vulpes, and he looked over the scope to really examine their surroundings. They were on a mostly flat stretch of waste, with a few stony ridges jutting up here and there. He traced their silhouettes until- yes. There. And Cato’s group was on a clear intercept course with their caravan…

“Let me talk to him, and head them off,” he requested from behind his rifle. He needed to keep the two groups from meeting. If Cato and Cassidy met, he was doomed. He might still be doomed if they _didn_ _’t_ meet. He could feel the crosshairs on him, making his skin crawl.

“Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

“If I don’t, we’ll probably all die.” He still stared at the men crouched stock-still on the ridge, invisible to anyone who didn’t know to look. There was a heavy click as Cass cocked her shotgun.

“Not if we start shooting now.”

“They have snipers on us,” Vulpes muttered. Think, think… He began shedding his bags and spare weaponry, letting them drop to the ground. Cato was a skilled fighter. Vulpes would need to be light on his feet ( _foot_ ) if he was going to stand any chance in a fight, if that’s what it came to.

“How do you know?” Yiska piped up.

“Because that’s how he was trained.” _Because that_ _’s what I trained him to do. Minimize risk, maximize impact._

“What in the _hell_ are you doing?” Cass demanded. Vulpes was down to just his rifles, sidearms, and blades, and was loping to meet Monique at the front of the caravan. He held his sniper rifle out to her.

“You know how to use this?” he asked as he shoved it into her hands.

“No.” She still took it, though, even if she pursed her lips uncertainly at him.

“Pretend you do. Aim at the man wearing the bandanna, but don’t shoot unless they kill me. If they kill me, leave the brahmin and run. He’ll want your supplies, not your lives.” _Probably._

“What happened to warning me when shit caught up to you?”

“I wasn’t expecting this particular _shit_ ,” Vulpes hissed through his teeth, weaving hurriedly back through the caravan.

“Now hold on,” Yiska interjected again, trailing behind Vulpes with arms spread in frustration. “Who the hell is this guy, and how do you know him?”

“We… were in the same line of work.” Too pressed for time to care about appearances, Vulpes returned to his gear and crouched down to dig out some Med-X from his bags and quickly shoot up, just enough to take the edge off his pain but leave him sharp-minded. He didn’t have the luxury of subtlety anymore; he heard Cass scoff and half turn away, muttering.

“So, what? He’s your shitty slave-driving ex-boss or something?” Yiska seemed less bothered by the chem use, still hung up on the potentially murderous stranger lurking on the horizon.

“No. I’m _his_ shitty slave-driving ex-boss.” He tossed the used needle away into the desert and rose again, compulsively flexing his hands. “Don’t shoot unless they kill me,” he reminded them as he struck off to meet Cato. “There’s a decent chance he’ll let us walk.”

“I’m not letting you go out there alone,” Cass barked, jogging out a few feet to head him off. He tried to sidestep her, but she blocked him again.

“He will _kill us._ _”_

“ _I_ _’m your fucking boss._ ”

“Then I quit,” Vulpes said easily, voice low. It wasn’t like he needed the caps. “Now let me go.”

They stared tensely at each other, standing barely a yard apart, and then Cass stepped aside, surly.

“You’re not off the hook,” she murmured as he passed her.

“Dibs on your shit if you die,” came Yiska’s voice, outwardly flippant but barely masking real concern.

“We’re going to have a chat about this when you come back,” Cass called after Vulpes as she stepped back to the caravan, audibly unhappy. “ _If_ you come back!”

“And just so you know, I hate this!” Yiska added chipperly.

“I’m going to go find a rock to hide behind,” added Cookie, and then Vulpes was too far away to hear them.

The good news was, he mused, that he was so deep in this hurricane of perpetual dread and anxiety, that he was now nestled in the eye of the storm, entirely numb. The knowledge that he might die in the next few minutes barely elevated his heart rate. Death at anyone’s hands but the Courier’s almost felt like a blessing. This was hardly the _worst_ thing that could happen to him. Plus, there was no way of knowing what Cato’s reaction would be.

Not that Vulpes expected a warm welcome. He didn’t. But he’d always known Cato to be a rational man. Given a reason, it seemed possible he was stand down and let them pass.

He heard shouting ahead as he approached the group amidst the sniper-infested sandstone ridges. Some of the men in Cato’s group were getting into formation, guns at the ready as they flanked their leader. A few ducked behind boulders, claiming cover in case it came to a fire fight. All the while, Cato stood out in the open with hands in pockets, watching Vulpes’ approach. Vulpes didn’t raise his empty hands into the air as he drew within thirty feet. Cato didn’t take his hands out of his pockets. When Vulpes came to a halt twenty feet away, near enough that they didn’t have to shout to hear each other, they just stared at each other appraisingly for a minute. Cato was as cool as Vulpes remembered him; his face was unreadable.

“So I guess you’re alive. You look like shit,” Cato finally said.

“You look the same.” Vulpes glanced around at the other ex-Legionaries; Cato might look the same, but his retinue was new. They raised their weapons fractionally as he caught their eye.

“Well, sure,” Cato said, politely ignoring how Vulpes stared at his men. “It’s only been, what, six months? Seven?”

“A lot can change in six months.” Vulpes was living proof. Cato nodded, conceding.

“They’re already telling ghost stories about you,” he said. He freed one hand to scratch his beard, then rested it on his holstered pistol. “You’re the new Burned Man. Traitor, murderer, and back from the dead as _vulpis cum tres crura_. Is there a reason I shouldn’t kill you?”

He seemed to be genuinely asking. He certainly didn’t look eager to pull the trigger. Or uneager, for that matter. He was refreshingly indifferent. If nothing else, Vulpes had always appreciated that trait in him.

“The woman with the sniper rifle will shoot you if you do,” Vulpes replied, just as calm. The numbness, chemical and psychological, still ironed out his nerves. Cato gave a small chuckle.

“You’re trusting a woman with a gun? So much for standards. You _have_ changed.” Cato waved the thought away, still faintly smiling. “I never liked you, Vulpes, but I respected you, so I’ll give you the chance to tell me- what in the _fuck_ are you doing out here.”

Vulpes didn’t respond. He could ask Cato the same, and he did them both a service by choosing not to. Cato seemed to realize this, because his smile widened for a second. Still not warm or friendly, but not antagonistic either. Maybe very mildly amused.

“Yeah, fair enough, I guess. But I gotta say, things aren’t looking great for you. I got a lot of hungry men to feed, and you got… what, four people and a couple cows? You can’t win, here.”

“Four people and a couple cows, yes,” Vulpes echoed. “How much inventory do you think we’re hauling? How much with any real value?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might matter to the _tiro_ that gets killed over junk,” Vulpes suggested. “Or are you willing to sacrifice a handful of men for a day or two of fresh beef?” He examined Cato’s men again; most looked young and green. They scowled a little too fervently at him. Brave faces. However, none of them, he noticed, turned their back on him or flicked the sign of the evil eye at him. They were inexperienced, yes, but they had promise as real fighters.

“You must know the NCR is hunting what’s left of the Legion. Why didn’t you go back east with Lucius?” he found himself asking Cato.

“Why would I? I was never cozy with the good old boys up in the command tent. I was hardly ever even in camp, thanks to you.” He pulled his other hand from his pocket to gesture broadly to the desert around them. “This- this is my home, and these are my people. Not some play-pretend city three hundred miles away.” He lifted his chin and squinted at Vulpes down the slope of his nose. “And why do you care? I heard you killed Caesar _and_ Lanius, and tried for Lucius before you got beaten down.”

Once again, Vulpes didn’t respond. He just gritted his teeth and suppressed a wordless growl.

“You don’t have to give me that look. Remember? I wasn’t cozy with high command. I don’t give a shit. All of this really does make me wonder what you’re up to with that caravan, though. Do they even know who you are? Consider it professional curiosity.”

Vulpes ignored the question once again. He shifted his weight, betraying his impatience.

“Fine. And you know what, I’m curious enough to let you and your little caravan go. But if I find out it was you picking my men off in the night, you’re gonna wish Lucius had caved your skull in.”

“If…What?” Vulpes asked, his blood running cold.

“Unless they’re deserting without their guns, clothes, and supplies, yeah. I’ve got men disappearing. If it was you-”

“It wasn’t. Disappearing how? When?” Vulpes took a few steps forward, leaning in. His heart gave a single heavy flop, the closest it could come to an uneasy flutter with the amount of Med-X running through his veins.

“There one minute, gone the next, without a trace,” Cato said, his relaxed tone shifting to a more businesslike one, as though he was giving a report. “Some gone during their guard duties, or while they were sleeping. One while he was off taking a piss. Always at night. We’ve lost five in the past three weeks.”

“Six,” one young man corrected him, before flushing red and glancing at his feet. “We lost Marius two night ago.”

“At night, without a trace,” Vulpes echoed, staring blankly over Cato’s shoulder. “Have you seen any night stalkers?”

“There are no night stalkers around here,” Cato replied, consternation showing in the wrinkle of his brow. “We’ve both scouted this area enough to know that.”

“A lot can change in six months,” Vulpes said once again, a hint of his desperation and urgency pushing through his words. “Watch the mirages. Listen for footsteps, and breathing. Or better yet, _go east_ ,” he urged.

“…If I ask what the hell is going on, will knowing get me killed?” Cato didn’t give Vulpes time to respond before he shook his head. “No. Don’t tell me. I always respected you a bit more than the others,” he said, “but you’re still one of the good old boys from the command tent. I don’t want to get mixed up in your bullshit.” Cato slowly looked left, then right, surveying his men before letting his flat stare rest on Vulpes again. A couple ex-Legionaries cocked their guns. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

Vulpes nodded curtly, slowly walking backwards away from Cato and his party. Only when he was about fifty feet away did he turn and begin walking back towards the caravan. Then jogging. Then running.

Everyone waiting for him was agitated when he came skidding back to the group, ducking to seize his gear off the ground and hastily swing it back over his shoulder.

“Time to go, _now_ ,” he panted, smacking the nearest brahmin on the rump. It bellowed, and lurched forward with a start. Around him, the other members of the caravan protested and scrambled. He ignored them, pushing forward toward Monique. She passed his rifle back to him and seized the second brahmin’s lead to pull it onward.

“What the hell’s going on?” Cass called out, obviously angry.

“We need to leave before he changes his mind,” Vulpes said, jogging ahead of the party. He didn’t mention his fear that the night stalkers he suspected were following Cato might latch onto their caravan if they lingered too long. If they hadn’t _already_.

“We need to-” Cass argued, coming up beside him and grabbing his arm, but he only growled at her.

“ _Later._ _”_

She scowled at him, but then her eyes fell to the PipBoy, just below her hold on his arm. She stiffened, and the emotion and color drained simultaneously from her face. Vulpes took the opportunity to pull free and push to the outside of the caravan, watching for Cato’s men or suspicious shimmers in the desert on their flank.

* * *

 _Later_ came within the hour, when Cato and his men had long since fallen out of sight, the other people in the caravan were growing tired and irritable, and the brahmin finally refused to move any faster than a walk.

Cass brought her brahmin to a halt, handed the reins to Cookie, and marched up to step in front of Vulpes, blocking his way. He stopped in his tracks, expectant.

She punched him. He let her. It was a good hit, he decided, when the pain emerged above the headwaters of the Med-X like a volatile, newly formed volcanic island. He sucked in a breath, pressing his fingers over his jaw where her knuckles had connected, and looked back to Cass.

“Whose caravan is this?” she asked him harshly as the others looked on.

“Yours.” He ran his tongue between his cheek and his molars, feeling for new sores and tasting blood.

“Who calls the shots here?”

“You.”

If the spectacle was meant to shame him, it was failing. This was child’s play compared to navigating Caesar’s conversations, where every question was a trap.

“Damn straight,” growled Cass. “I call the shots. If you have concerns, you bring them to me. If you have ideas, you run them by me. You do _not_ keep secrets that put my caravan in danger, and you do _not_ decide what to do when the danger gets here. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t quite meeting her eye; without realizing it he’d slipped into his habitual at-ease stance, and stared vaguely over her shoulder as if she was Caesar himself.

“Did you or did you not know about those raiders?”

Vulpes didn’t correct her on who or what they are, but he did shake his head.

“No. I did not know about them.”

“How did you know them, then?”

“We worked together, once.” He blinked. “We were mercenaries.”

“So you didn’t think you had to tell me about your murderous old coworkers. Were you going to tell me about the chems? Because I don’t like my employees using on the job.”

“I don’t like my employer drunk on the job.” His eyes slid sideways to meet hers, cold and unyielding. She was as sober as he’d ever seen her, now, and her face flushed with indignation. “Such is life.”

“Explain the PipBoy.”

Tense silence fell between them. Vulpes carefully examined her expression, her stance. She clearly knew _something_ , but he didn’t know what, or how. He kept his mouth shut as he thought. Cass grew impatient.

“Because it doesn’t belong to you,” she said sharply.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said flatly, too easily recalling his interrogation training. Admit nothing, deny everything, manufacture confusion.

“I mean, it’s not yours, and I want to know where you got it.” She leaned a little closer, her jaw jutting forward with barely reined fury. She _seethed_. She knew the PipBoy had belonged to the Courier, somehow, and it pissed her off. He leaned away from her invasion of space and thought quickly.

“I bought it from a scrapper in Freeside,” he lied as he ran the edge of a fingernail along the cracked glass of its screen The Lucky 38 suite had been stripped of all valuables before he got there. Surely some of the hoard had been cycled back onto the market by whoever was responsible. “It was damaged. Barely cost me anything.”

Cass glowered for several more seconds, the muscle in her jaw visibly flexing as she clenched her teeth. Finally, she jabbed a finger at him, not quite making contact with his chest.

“Once we reach the border outpost, you’re done, and we part ways. I don’t want you in this caravan anymore. You’re a goddamn liability.”

Vulpes blinked at her again, and decided not to remind her that that had been their agreement all along, or that he’d technically already quit. However, he couldn’t help but say “You would all be dead, if I hadn’t been here.”

“Maybe your friends would never have known we were here, if you hadn’t been here.” With that, Cass stalked back to the brahmin, snatched the lead from Cookie, and yanked the cattle forward. It grumbled as much as she did as they both passed Vulpes by. He continued to watch her as he assumed a pace that should have returned him to the rear of the group, if Monique didn’t shake her head and slow down to stay behind him. As he stalked along, too aware of the armed woman behind him, he couldn’t help but focus his attention on the other woman who took the lead.

He was as suspicious of Cass now as she was of him, and more than a little worried. Dread had begun gnawing at his stomach again. He ignored the doubtful glances he got from the other three members of Cass’s caravan as he turned things over and over in his head.

She had had a _very_ hard time, finding guards to employ. The attitude toward her had ranged from derisive to openly cautious.

Bad luck and paranoia, she had said. He hadn’t cared enough to question it at the time. Now though, that decision felt imprudent.

Bad luck came in all shapes and sizes. Here in the Mojave, there was good reason to suspect it came with four legs, mechanical arms, and a bullet-scarred brain.

* * *

Cass led the caravan well off the main road, that day, in an attempt to shake anyone who might be following them. Vulpes remained silent on the matter, to everyone’s apparent relief. Cookie and Cass watched him with unspoken mistrust; Yiska still seemed to be attempting to puzzle out where he’d seen Vulpes before and who he really was. Monique was professionally unreadable, and though she did seem to be keeping an eye on him, he couldn’t get a sense of what she was thinking.

She might have made a good frumentarius, he thought idly, had the Legion allowed women into the ranks.

Regardless, the tension ate at Vulpes, who felt eyes on him even when none of his traveling companions were looking. He discreetly helped himself to more Med-X in an attempt to still the turbulent waters of his mind, but it just made his anxiety foggier and more difficult to pin down. He blinked dopily at the passing scenery, knowing deep down that hiding in chems only dulled his senses and made him more vulnerable, but too removed in the haze to dwell on it.

Besides, he’d been making nothing but poor decisions for months, now, and he was _fine_. It was too late to course-correct now, he reasoned. Maybe it wasn’t _best_ to lean in, but oh, _it felt good_.

He sneaked a little more when they made camp for the night, far off the road in the middle of nowhere. The stars shone brightly, and the space between them was _black_ , and he just couldn’t stop himself until he was way too far under.

 _You idiot_ , was about all he could think when Cass abandoned her supper to squat down in front of where he sat on the edge of the darkness, her eyes flashing orange from the firelight.

“Who are you? Did someone send you here?” she asked, too close for his comfort. There was no whiskey on her breath.

Oh. She’s sober. Dumb, bad, dumb. His thoughts tumbled slow and awkward through his head; he blinked, opened his mouth, and his attention drifted away as he struggled to weave a convincing lie.

“Did you think I was done with you?” the woman asked quietly. There was steel in her eyes and her words. “That was just round one, before. I want to know who you are and what you’re doing here.”

“I told you my name. Noah.”

“Right.” Obvious doubt. “Who are you really.”

“I’m no one and nothing,” Vulpes muttered, peering over one shoulder to look for the others, but Cass swiftly reached out and snapped her fingers inches from his face, making him flinch and look back to her.

“Don’t lie to me. Give me a reason not to hog tie you and leave you for your buddies to find.”

“…’M just a guard,” Vulpes said, really struggling to think. He was rewarded with a sharp, but not especially hard, slap to the cheek. The world spun for a brief moment, and he squeezed his eyes shut against a sudden wave of nausea. Too much Med-X. Idiot.

“Who are you.”

“Noah. Nobody.” Another slap, and he had to drop his head between his knees to keep from vomiting.

“Fucking disgusting,” Cass grumbled. He heard her stand up and return to the campfire behind him. “Trip’s in time out. Yiska, you take first watch; Monique, you’re second. We’re striking camp bright and early.”

Time oozed by, immeasurable. Vulpes still sat on the same rock, even after the rest of the caravan went to sleep and Yiska began pacing random shapes through the camp as he patrolled. Too much Med-X. What an idiot. The only thing keeping his leaden eyes open was the lingering dread that cut into his high. Every noise in the desert darkness rang loud in his ears, instantly threatening. Every mild gust of wind was a night stalker’s breath and movement.

Breathing shallowly, Vulpes took the hunting knife from his belt. He turned the blade in his hands, then pressed its point into his already inflamed thigh just enough to send a spike of pain up his leg. The sensation rang through the chems like a bell, bringing a millisecond of clarity to his mind.

_It_ _’s all falling apart again._

He pressed the knife into his leg again, a little rougher, and he hissed quietly against the pain.

_You_ _’re a fool to expect anything but destruction to follow you in your wake._

_You_ _’re like the Courier, that way._

He ruthlessly twisted the knife at that, stifling a whimper as he drew blood and the pain lanced up through his hip like lightning.

 _Not_ like the Courier, he was not like the Courier, he was just _high_ and _stupid_ and _hallucinating_ , because he heard footsteps again, and there’s never _really_ footsteps. He saw movement in the dark, but it’s always just his mind, and his chems. He giggled desperately as he looked into the night and imagined he could pick out mismatched eyes and pointing ears and fur overlapping scales overlapping fur, because all it was was dancing lights, invented by misfiring synapses in the dark.

 _Pareidolia_ , some dusty part of his memory provided, conjuring some fragment of a scene in Caesar’s tent, and a pointless conversation he had only half payed attention to at the time. From _para_ , meaning other or alternate, and _eidolon_ , meaning an image. A ghost. Pareidolia, meaning seeing things where there is nothing, and finding patterns in the chaos.

Yiska continued his leisurely patrol. Vulpes continued to pick shapes out in the dark and lose them just as quickly. Here, a glimpse of a paw. There, bulbous eyes.

Nothing, though. Nothing. His pant leg darkened; his knife tip was still buried a half inch deep in muscle. His breath came rapid and shallow as he stared, wide eyed and unblinking, into the ghost-face of a night stalker, and it stared back.

 _“What the fuck_ ,” Yiska swore from just behind him, jolting him from his terrified stupor. There was a click, then the explosion of shotgun fire. A slug tore into the night stalker, spraying blood and flesh. It collapsed with a very heavy, very real thud. Rattles and hisses and yips suddenly filled the air, rising over the percussion of scrambling feet. Yiska leapt into view, and turned a horrified expression on Vulpes. “What the fuck are you doing? Shoot them!”

Oh, no.

_Oh, no._

Vulpes lurched immediately upright, and he stumbled backwards towards the campfire. Into the light, into the light, away from the encroaching blackness and its many snapping jaws. Around him, the others leapt out of their bedrolls, yelling to each other and taking up arms. Vulpes took the assault rifle from his back, and fired at a pair of uncloaked night stalkers that lunged out of shadows. They dropped with wailing yelps, and he moved along. A shimmer moved along the edge of the camp; he fired three rounds into it, killing another night stalker. Nearby, another seized the heel of a panicking brahmin in its needled jaws, only to take a lethal kick to the face. The brahmin screamed its terror as it vanished into the desert, the other trotting along after it.

“Monique, the brahmin!” Cass shouted, firing scattershot into the night and reloading.

“On it!”

“ _Fuck!_ ” Yiska cried out again. Like with the brahmin, a night stalker had slipped suddenly out of camouflage to sink its double rows of teeth into his calf and pull him to the ground. He kicked viciously at its face with his boot, swearing the whole time, until Vulpes was able to shoot it.

Still more night stalkers appeared, or failed to- Vulpes shot two more cloaked beasts, and one just as it let itself come visible in the second before an attack. The frantic gunfire continued around him; Yiska had found his feet and was limping nearly as badly as Vulpes as he tried and failed to find cover from the ambush.

There was a loud bellow, and suddenly a brahmin was charging back through camp again, its heads lowered. It caught a night stalker on its horns as it burst through the light; the blood came first, and then the camouflage melted away. It flung the corpse off its horns before it pierced the night again. Monique yelled in the near distance. Somewhere close, Cookie was whimpering.

“More coming!” announced Cass, raising her shotgun at a young uncloaked night stalker that skidded around a pile of merchandise. Its head nearly exploded when she fired.

“This ain’t good,” Yiska moaned, staggering. Vulpes instinctively moved to stand nearly back to back with him, only a few feet between them. Just then, a huge cloaked night stalker slid from the shadows, visible only as a ripple in the firelight. Vulpes lifted his rifle again and pulled the trigger, only for the gun to jam. He hissed and swore as he scrabbled at the caught casing, burning his finger tips. He backed away from the beast until he collided with Yiska-

 _Bang_ , and the big night stalker skipped a step, its camouflage torn away like a yanked tablecloth. Blood streamed down its shoulder, matting its fur, and it held that paw aloft as it gaped stupidly to the side. From the middle of the heap of merchandise, Cookie was crouched with the smoking gun, visibly shocked that he’d actually hit something.

The night stalker moved, and so did Vulpes. He threw aside his jammed rifle as the abomination crouched somewhat, ready to pounce, and then he drew his machete. It swung in a flashing arc even as the night stalker tried to turn away, and then it bit deep into flesh. The night stalker’s body spasmed before it hit the ground, and then once again when Vulpes wrenched the blade out of its neck.

While he was half-bent over the body, a weight slammed against his back, knocking him down onto the hot, dusty corpse, and there was hot breath at his ear. On pure instinct, he immediately clasped his hands behind his neck, shielding his throat with his arms. He heard the faint, wet sound of its mouth opening just before he felt the stabbing in his shoulder, as the night stalker sank teeth into armor and flesh trying to get at his neck.

There was a grunt and a jolt as the weight suddenly doubled, then vanished. Vulpes coughed and dragged himself forward off the night stalker corpse on hand and knee, clutching at the bite. Already, it burned. He rolled onto his side to free his sidearm from its holster, and looked back to see Yiska standing unsteadily over the dead body of the beast that had attacked him from behind. Nothing else in the camp seemed to be moving; Cass was standing at the ready, but no more night stalkers appeared.

“ _Fuck!_ _”_ Yiska wailed emphatically as he tried to take a step and immediately fell back to the ground.

 _Yes, that_ _’s how it starts_ , Vulpes thought numbly. _First it hurts, then it stops working, and then they cut your leg off._ He laid on the ground for another moment, crushing down the rising pain in his own shoulder, and then he forced himself upright.

His bag. He had to find his bag. He suppressed a groan as he staggered to the box he’d been sitting on before the attack. His pack was leaned against it.

“Cass? I don’t feel- I think I need some help,” Yiska continued to call feebly from his position on the ground. He was clutching the bite in his calf, and shaking like a leaf. “It really fucking hurts, guys, _fuck_ , I…”

“I’ve never had to deal with a night stalker bite before!” Cookie exclaimed in a panic. He stood up from behind his cover, but otherwise stayed put. All the while, Vulpes dug one-handed through his pack, grasping his injured shoulder with the other and breathing a little too shallowly. He could have sworn when he had killed all those chem dealers, he’d scavenged some- _yes_.

The antivenom he’d found was untested, and he had no idea if it would work for a night stalker bite, but it couldn’t hurt. Vulpes cursed the low light before turning on his PipBoy light and injecting himself in the crook of the right elbow. He didn’t feel an obvious change, but his burning shoulder didn’t seem to be getting worse. While he was at it, he jabbed a Stim-Pak directly in his shoulder, grimacing at the nearly painful icy-cold sensation that followed.

He tossed his used needles away and looked at Yiska, and at the two remaining doses of antivenom he had. Yiska _had_ saved him…

Cass And Cookie were at Yiska’s side by the time Vulpes limped over with one of his antivenom doses in hand. Without warning or permission, he dropped gracelessly to his knees and pried one of Yiska’s arms away from his leg. Before anyone could object, he found a vein, held it steady, and injected the antivenom. Yiska whined and snatched his arm back, but the favor had been repaid. Vulpes immediately returned his attention to his surroundings, eyes darting for any latecomers to the fight. His heart seemed to stagger along as haphazardly as he did, skipping beats and stuttering to make up for it. He felt like he was going to vomit.

He wasn’t too aware of Cass as she stood up and turned to watch him, her shotgun still in hand. He was busy glancing into the impenetrable night, then down at the PipBoy as he fiddled with the dials, looking for the radio. As he did that, he hobbled to the nearest night stalker corpse; he left the radio on static for a moment as he got down on one knee and shone his PipBoy’s task light on the body, scanning for anything that might suggest the Courier’s touch. His breath seized in his chest at the sight of a shaved patch near its ear, and a pink-white scar that cut diagonally up to the top of its skull. A wire emerged from the healed incision, leading to a matte black tube-shaped camera smaller than a rifle shell, screwed into bone at the junction of its head and its ear.

No, no no no. He wrapped a hand around the camera and yanked it free from its moorings. Another tug ripped the wire from its head with a snap he felt but did not hear.

He could see for miles and miles and miles.

Vulpes was definitely going to vomit. His heart physically _hurt._ It felt like a vice had closed around his bitten shoulder, and the corresponding arm. The world spun.

“What the fuck was that?” Cass asked, and he continued to ignore her. He squeezed his eyes shut until he regained some composure, then found the Courier’s station on the radio and struggled to get upright again. Billie Holiday crooned sweetly to the camp as he hurried to the next night stalker corpse, found no technological additions, then went to retrieve his jammed rifle. He still struggled to breath properly; it felt like there wasn’t enough air in the desert to support him.

_…I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places, that this heart of mine embraces, all day and through…_

He shuddered and hunched his shoulders. He needed, he needed- he needed his sniper rifle, where had he-

Cass dropped an unfriendly hand on his shoulder and whirled him around with a rough shove.

“ _What,_ ” she hissed, “ _the fuck. Was that._ ”

Vulpes jerked wordlessly away from her, then turned to get his rifle.

“Did you do this? Are you working with the Courier?”

He froze. He turned.

“You think the Courier was here for you?” The question felt metallic with adrenaline in his mouth, and he wondered if this was was the Courier meant when he said he could taste words. The Courier’s name tasted like panic and violence.

“What, you think he’s after _you? Who the fuck are you!_ _”_

_…I'll find you in the morning sun, and when the night is new, I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you…_

“What would the Courier want with _you_?” Vulpes asked, horrified and confused and still dizzy with Med-X and panic.

Nearby, Yiska was vomiting, with Cookie nervously patting his back. He wiped his mouth and sneered.

“She’s Rose of Sharon fucking Cassidy, you fucking idiot,” Yiska said. “Hung out with the Courier in his fancy casino for a while and then she split and started her caravan up again. Why the hell did you think everyone was avoiding her?”

“…What?” New horror washed over Vulpes, but he was so deep already, it was little more than an unpleasant prickle up his spine. He didn’t remember hearing about any caravaneer in the Courier’s party, and he’s gone out of his way to familiarize himself with them. This was an _egregious_ oversight. “What else did I miss?” he asked himself in a whisper.

“I’m not going to ask you again,” Cass warned, slowly approaching Vulpes to get in better shotgun range. “Who the fuck are you.”

A manic smile twitched at Vulpes’ lips. He crouched momentarily to pick up his sniper rifle without looking away from the enraged redhead. At this range, the slug would turn anything it hit into red mist.

“What’s your relationship with the Courier?” he asked, hating the crazed quaver in his voice. “Why haven’t I heard about you?”

“Because you live under a fucking _rock?_ ” suggested Yiska.

Vulpes cocked his head with a twitch, and righted it again.

“My scouts never mentioned you,” he commented, before realizing what he’d said. Immediately, Cass’s face darkened with confirmed suspicion. She stopped approaching when Vulpes aimed the rifle at her from the hip, though her shotgun never left him. If they both pulled their triggers together, they would both certainly die. Neither was quite prepared.

“Jesus Christ. I _knew_ it, even if I can’t fucking believe it,” Cass said. “You’re Vul-”

“ _And that was_ _‘I’ll Be Seeing You,’ sung by Billie Holiday, dedicated to old friends and companions, out there in the desert,”_ the Courier’s voice thrummed suddenly from Vulpes’ PipBoy, distracting them both. “ _Remember_ _… you’re never truly alone. Not with_ old friends _watching your back._ _”_ A spasm tore through Vulpes, choking him, making him suck in a sharp breath as he squeezed his eyes shut, before he forced them open again to look up at the moon and out into the darkness. They weren’t alone.

“Jesus Christ,” Cass whispered, also turning to look for signs of life in the darkness. Where Vulpes shook like a leaf and struggled to breathe, she stood as stiff as a board.

“ _One more for old friends,_ ” the Courier said, his voice dangerously warm and close even through the speaker of the PipBoy. “ _This is the Beach Boys._ ”

The song began. Nobody moved.

_On and on she go dum bee-doo-da, on and on she go dum bee-doo_ _…_

There was a noise in the darkness, and Cass spun to face it, widening her stance. Yiska and Cookie also stared, terrified, towards the noise. Vulpes took a slow step towards the other side of the camp.

_On and on you go dum bee-doo-da, on and on you go dum bee-doo_ _…_

More shuffling, and Cass raised her shotgun, waiting for a clear shot before she pulled the trigger. Vulpes took another step backwards, then another, before completely turning and facing the night.

_With me tonight, I know you_ _’re with me tonight, you're with me tonight, I know you're with me tonight, for sure you're with me tonight, I'm sure you're with me tonight-_

He let the darkness envelope him, and then he turned off the radio. In the camp, Cass lowered her gun with a start as Monique stumbled back into the light, leading an unhappy brahmin. He heard the murmur of their voices behind him in the new silence. He glanced back just as Cass turned and noticed his absence.

He _ran_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, the shit's hit the fan now!
> 
> The music in this chapter was:  
> ["I'll Be Seeing You" by Billie Holiday](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l44_n60QQ8)  
> ["With Me Tonight" by the Beach Boys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-INZyQXQwso)
> 
> Thank you all for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos! I appreciate it so much, it's great for the motivation. I also want to remind you that there will likely be a brief hiatus in the next few weeks; summer is just a really busy season for me, and there's a few things I need to get done.


	17. Chapter 17

He ran.

He ran longer and harder than he ever had before, until his legs gave out and he collapsed in a heap off the road somewhere southeast of Primm. His stump was bleeding profusely; even he could smell it, and he was used to it. His throat felt ragged and raw; his shoulder was swollen, and it felt like a fist was still closed over his heart.

Slowly, he half-crawled, half-dragged himself up into some scrub, carefully avoiding cacti.

He didn’t sleep so much as fall unconscious.

* * *

He slowly slid back into awareness some time after dawn. His body was so stiff he could hardly move, but he forced it to- ever the slave driver, and ever the slave. He only allowed himself a few minutes after shooting up with a larger than usual amount of Med-X to lay motionless in the brush and weeds. The moment the pain took a half step away, he was up and moving again, if more slowly than before.

Running hadn’t worked. That was painfully obvious now. He could not run from a monster with invisible eyes and unknowable reach.

He had to hide. Somewhere more secure than New Vegas- he couldn’t rely on foot traffic to prevent night stalker infiltration. It might be difficult to navigate the crowd at peak hours under a shroud of camouflage, but it was far from impossible, and there was nothing barring the Courier from dispatching night stalkers in full daylight when the streets were less crowded. Besides… the Securitrons were everywhere. Perhaps the Courier enjoyed the imagery of night stalkers, but the Securitrons had been in his control too, and it seemed unlikely he would fully relinquish that hold.

Not New Vegas, then. What he really needed was a bunker. A night stalker, even with a camera embedded in its skull, couldn’t open a bunker door.

Vulpes knew where to look.

He stopped running away. He began running towards.

* * *

The bunker door was shut when he approached it. There was a console installed into the wall beside it, though; a cable was coiled below the speaker. One end vanished into the wall. The other was capped with a strangely shaped plug.

The shape was vaguely familiar. Uncertain, Vulpes turned his attention to his PipBoy, twisting his arm this way and that as he investigated its surface, and inadvertently flashing its light over the walls, the ceiling.

There, over the top edge of the screen. A port, recessed into the steel and filled with a hinged rubber plug that he popped loose with a thumbnail. He fumbled at the cable on the wall, tried to plug it into his PipBoy, failed. He rotated the plug, and it still wouldn’t go in. Rotated it again, bringing it back to its original orientation, and it slipped easily into the slot.

The PipBoy’s screen changed; the Vault Boy was locked in a looping animation as it loaded, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he flipped through old fashioned keys fixed on a keyring.

_Loading_ _…,_ it said below the gold pixellated image. A new line appeared under the first. _Searching for key_ _…_

After several seconds, the image changed in a blink- the Vault Boy was holding a key up, grinning, victorious. The message changed, too:

_Key found!_

_[Unlock Door]  
[Forget Key]_

He frowned at the options, then carefully turned the knobs until “unlock door” was highlighted, then he pressed the action button. When the bolt in the heavy door actually shifted, slamming back into the wall, he jumped. He hadn’t expected it to be this easy. He yanked the plug from his PipBoy and returned it to the wall, but hesitated.

…What other keys did the Courier collect?

He scowled as he slowly navigated the PipBoy interface, finding the keyring program and opening it. It loaded again, and he tapped his fingers impatiently against the PipBoy’s wristband as he watched the Vault Boy fruitlessly flipping the keys, over and over and over.

At last it opened, and he was given a list of all the keys in the PipBoy’s memory.

There were _hundreds_. Some were clearly labeled- a few Vaults, ancient military and medical computers, several from somewhere called the Big M.T.- but others were less obvious. Casino Mobster, one said. Scorpion Deathbots. That One Factory’s 2nd Floor. The list went on and on- places Vulpes recognized, places he’d _been_ , places he’d never heard of at all. And the Courier had not only been to all of them, he’d apparently either wheedled the passwords from people or hacked into the computers to get them. So much time and effort, just to open doors.

He supposed, though, as he opened the Brotherhood of Steel’s bunker door and slipped through, that was the key to the Courier’s success. His sheer doggedness in wanting his nose in everything. If not to interfere, then just to _know_. Vulpes knew better than anyone that there was real power in simply knowing.

The train of thought slipped away as he moved through the front room of the bunker, deeper into the dark halls, and encountered his first corpse. It was a shriveled thing, crusty, with lips pulled away from teeth in an eternal grimace, eyelids stretched over empty sockets, twisted limbs, muscles dried to sinuous rope under the paper skin. It was sprawled in the entryway, reaching towards the door. Maybe they’d been trying to get out.

What the Courier had done here… it had been quiet, almost elegant, but no less brutal than if he’d blown the place up. It was just like him, though, to let their own strengths become their undoing. If they didn’t rely so much on remaining insular, if they didn’t believe so strongly in the safety that the bunker afforded them, then they might not have died en masse when the Courier had disabled the ventilation. If they’d so much as cracked the door, they might have lived.

Furtive, Vulpes nudged at the body with his peg leg. It was encrusted to the floor with a dried up puddle of decomp juice.

He continued, deeper into bunker. Radroaches scuttled in the shadows; he passed a second body, and a third. Slowly, he explored the bunker: the computer labs, the fabrication workshop, the meeting room, the shooting range.  He peered down through floor grates into service tunnels packed with crates and boxes. He looked up into the network of pipes and conduit that lined all the ceilings. He was alone with the dead in their tomb.

Strangely satisfied, he walked back up to the first level, to a sleeping quarters he’d found off an inner hallway. He dropped his gear beside the bunk furthest from the door, but didn’t sit down- if he gave his weary leg a break now, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back up when he wanted to, and he wasn’t sure if the ventilation system the Courier had disabled was still out of order. He hadn’t had any trouble breathing so far, but he was one man and the bunker had had months to equalize with the outside world through whatever vents and leaks it had. If the ventilation still wasn’t working, he didn’t want to find out by waking up in the middle of the night disoriented and suffocating.

Problem was, Vulpes had no idea _what_ the Courier had done, exactly. He’d followed him here what felt like a lifetime ago, when the Courier had done this, but there had been a sandstorm raging. For almost a full day after he initially prowled the area above the bunker, the Courier had camped out there, seemingly relaxing, amusing himself by bayonetting scorpions. Vulpes didn’t see him actually _do_ anything. The only thing he’d clearly witnessed from his vantage point behind the chainlink fence was the Courier vanishing into the bunker at the end of the day wearing a respirator and emerging half an hour later with some sort of fence post or pipe in his hand. He saw the Courier lift the post up over his head, and ram it into the ground as hard as he could. It wobbled, barely embedded. He hammered it in further with a rock. Then, he reached into his pack and pulled out a rumpled piece of fabric. He fussed with it for a minute in the harsh wind, but then unfolded it into a wrinkled but identifiable NCR flag. Quickly, he fastened it to the pole, gave it a tug to be sure it was firmly in place, and turned back to the bunker.

He seemed to be yelling something at the bunker. Snarling, grinning, a feral sight. Vulpes couldn’t make out the words, but his tone had been vicious.

Nobody came out of the bunker. Vulpes lingered for a little while after the Courier had moved on, watching and waiting, but nobody came out to take down the NCR flag, either. He fleetingly considered trying to get into the bunker, but almost immediately vetoed himself. What would happen if there was a cloud of poison gas behind that closed door? What would happen if there were dozens of living, healthy, _armed_ paladins?

But he knew it didn’t matter. He knew, deep down, that they were all dead, in there. One way or another. After all, only days before, the Courier had massacred the Fiends in Vault 3 and left signs that pointed to a Legion presence there. He wouldn’t have framed the NCR by planting that flag if he’d left anybody alive to take it down.

He found out later from his scouts that there was no poison, just bad, dead air. It wasn’t clear where the information had come from, but he never knew the Courier to carry chemical weapons. Sabotage, however, felt right.

Sabotage _from the outside_. He hadn’t seen the Courier go into the bunker until everyone was presumably dead already.

Vulpes grabbed his rifle and headed back outside the bunker. The sandstorms that used to plague this area had withered and died since the battle at the dam; it made it easier for him to find what he was looking for- a vent, poking eight inches up out of the earth, painted matte red-brown to blend in. It had a hood over it, and filters that blocked out the sand, but when he pried these, off, he just stood staring.

It was obvious what the Courier had done, now. It was… absurdly simple. _Frustratingly_ so.

In the shaft that ran down into the ground, there was a large fan. Its curved blades stood motionless in their framework, brought to a halt by an ingot of gold that had been wedged into the works. The steel had cut a deep notch into the buttery metal before it was stopped.

Vulpes glanced around for hostiles and seeing none, he removed the ammunition from his rifle, placing it carefully in the dirt beside him. Then, he leaned forward over the shaft, shoved the stock of the rifle in the gap between a fan blade and one of the struts in the fan’s frame, and pried the fan back slightly, counter to its rotation. At the same time, he caught hold of the gold bar and removed it from the works, tugging it off the edge of the fan blade. He tossed it aside, and pulled his rifle free.

Nothing happened. The fan still sat motionless.

Not for the first time, Vulpes wished he knew more about technology. Had something broken when the fan was stopped? Was there some sort of… emergency stop, or something, that kicked in when the fan wouldn’t spin?

He sighed heavily as he reloaded his rifle and picked up the gold bar. It was heavy, though it fit comfortably in his hand. Above the hammered type declaring it 10 kilograms of 99.9% pure gold was a logo of the sun shining off a mountain peak, and the words Sierra Madre.

Sierra Madre… _Sierra Madre_. He remembered. The abandoned bunker, where he had followed the Courier, and where he later led Craig Boone. _I left my heart at the Sierra Madre,_ the graffiti had said. And somehow, Sierra Madre gold had wound up in the Courier’s hand, and the Courier decided the best use for it was as a weapon.

Vulpes didn’t understand, and he didn’t want to. He tucked the gold into a pouch on his belt and limped back into the bunker, down to the mechanical areas. He’d seen what looked like an electrical panel on his first walk through. Maybe this would be as simple as throwing a switch.

He hoped it was that simple. He was tired, and it had nothing to do with the air quality.

He found the panel in the lower levels, imposingly large and emblazoned with caution stripes, lightning bolts, and warning signs. He pulled open the door on the panel, exposing several columns of black switches. They were labeled, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of them, and they were all in the on position. Frustrated, his attention wandered to the large switch at the top of the panel.

The master switch. Worth a shot. He reached up, grabbed the switch, and threw it. Instantly, the lights died, leaving him in abject darkness. A background hum he hadn’t even registered now made itself blatantly known through its absence; pipes creaked and rattled in the sudden dark silence. There were a few mechanical bangs of machinery grinding to a halt elsewhere in the bunker.

He waited until it was completely quiet, but for the continuing light clang of water in the pipes, and then he threw the switch again.

There was no immediate reaction, as there was the first time, but the bunker slowly came back to life. First was the hum, which began low and whirred higher. Then the lights, flickering and anemic. Somewhere in the substructure, something beeped twice and fell silent.

Once again, Vulpes hobbled back upstairs and outside, making a pit stop in the dusty old infirmary to grab a pair of crutches. With their help, he went back out across the barren ground to the protruding vent. He heard it before he saw it; a dull roar as the fan pushed up to full speed. The blade that had hit the gold bar had been slightly bent, and the whole fixture wobbled slightly as a result, but it seemed stable enough.

Satisfied and exhausted, Vulpes replaced the vent cover and shuffled back into the bunker, securing the door and making his way down the dim hallways of the dead to the barracks. He leaned his rifle against the wall beside his cot, fell into bed, and wearily unbuckled his prosthetic leg. He was asleep within moments of it hitting the floor.

* * *

He was trying- and failing- to get a shovel under a stubborn corpse.

One by one, he’d spent the days prying up the bodies from where they’d encrusted to the floor and dragging them off to the dead-end bunker nearby. It wasn’t that he particularly cared about them as people; they were fellow victims of the Courier, but they wouldn’t have met a kinder fate at Legion hands, had it come to that. He couldn’t honestly claim it was out of a concern for health and hygiene, either. At this point in their deterioration, the corpses seemed pretty benign.

Mostly, it was something to keep him busy. The more he had to do, the less time he had to spend thinking about the fact that he was here to hide from the Courier. That kind of cowardice was hard to admit to, even now, after everything, and there was still the lingering _nagging_ truth that this wasn’t a solution and he didn’t know what was.

So, he cleaned the bunker, one body at a time.

This one was being difficult. Most of the Brotherhood had been clothed when they fell, and that had helped to absorb the fluids when they inevitably began to rot, making it easier to pull them up later. This scribe, however, had been preparing for a shower, and had puddled across the bathroom floor. Instead of getting under the body, the shovel he’d been using for the process kept slipping and gouging the mummified mass, baring stringy purple muscle and greasy bone.

After several minutes of futile attempts, and quickly growing frustrated, Vulpes took a break. His muscles were aching and twitching, only partly from exertion. With one hand trailing along the wall, he limped back to a small conference room he’d been using as a place to maintain his gear, eat his meals, and… other things.

He eased himself onto the stool behind the tall table, and let his hands roam across the various tools and gadgets that had amassed since he’d moved in. He forced his mind to wander as his fingers came to a rest on a leather bundle, pushed casually to the side. He wasn’t proud of this.

On autopilot, he unwrapped the brown glass bottle and the set of syringes bundled with it. He measured out a dose, pawed at the grime on his inner arm to produce a cleaner patch, and injected himself.

Almost immediately, a cool wave of relief rolled through him. His heart settled to an easier pace, and his tense shoulders loosened. With practiced self loathing, he withdrew the needle and tossed it far enough down the table that he wouldn’t have to look at it. A moment later, he shoved the Med-X bottle and leather roll of unused needles away to join it.

He sat and soaked for a few minutes, letting his forehead rest against his arms on the table. But then, before his mind could drift too far, he got up and limped back to the bathroom to take up his shovel again.

* * *

He sat in the cool darkness.

“This is peaceful,” he murmured in Latin to the corpse beside him. He couldn’t see its hollow stare, but he felt it. He grumbled, and aimed a loose, light kick at its legs. There was a skitter as his toe bumped against shinbone, moving the entire mummy as one unit.

“Not my fault the Courier got you. You can blame your own hubris.”

His words, though quiet, echoed eerily down the bunker and back, falling on a score of deaf ears. He leaned his head back against the concrete to wait until the last reverberation had faded, and the only sound was his own pulse: slow, lazy. If he cut himself now, he’d ooze more than he’d bleed. The thought lingered longer than it should have; Vulpes’ hand fidgeted over the handle of his hunting knife.

“Peaceful,” he repeated, but an uneasiness was coming over him. A half dozen gnarled faces wore grins in the abject nothing. He thought of Caesar.

He pushed his knife firmly into its sheathe and pulled his limbs in, hauling his prosthetic with a hand around its peglike end when it dragged.

“Keep laughing,” he growled, finding his footing and feeling for the light on his PipBoy. “This is the end of the road for you. Enjoy your peace and quiet.” Led by the yellow glow of the PipBoy, he stepped over splayed arms and legs on the way to the door. “It never suited me.”

* * *

He scrubbed the floor until his hands were a mass of blisters and his knuckles were worn raw.

He scrubbed.

Skin slipped, blood swirled into the hot water.

He scrubbed.

* * *

He sat balled up in the dark, in the company of his fellow victims. In his hands, he held the PipBoy. The radio was tuned to the Courier’s station, and ground out his carefully selected music through a thick curtain of static. There was no radio reception in the depths of the Brotherhood bunker, but in this aborted tunnel-turned-tomb, he could just barely get a signal.

He listened to the music like a spy that had stumbled on an enemy number station. The music itself was as much noise to him as the static was; the lyrics, however, felt meaningful in a way that left him nauseous and itching to shoot up. When the Courier spoke between songs, it felt like a personal address.

He spoke of old friends, and of _watching_ , and _becoming,_ all veiled in a faux familiarity he had stolen from Mr. New Vegas, feigning intimacy with an audience of voyeurs who had only stumbled upon his game by chance and didn’t recognize it for what it was.

If it wasn’t a game- if it wasn’t meant for _him_ \- then Joshua Graham would be dead. Instead, the Courier regularly cut the audio to the Burned Man reading from his bible in a worn and weary voice, stumbling over lines, rereading them. Sometimes, in the background, Vulpes could hear the Courier mockingly saying the lines back to him in the warped, high-low voice of his night stalker body rather than the human voice he wore for the radio, too far away from whatever microphone he was using to be obvious to anybody who didn’t know what to listen for.

Vulpes knew. Vulpes listened, and it made his stomach churn uneasily. Graham’s continued existence meant something, even if he wasn’t sure exactly what. Maybe he was meant to be a lure, to get Vulpes to come back to the Divide. Maybe the Courier thought Vulpes would see the Burned Man’s torture as a gift. Maybe it was just a reminder- he hadn’t forgotten Vulpes. Vulpes shouldn’t forget him. Not when the weight of the Courier’s attention still rested on his shoulders.

He listened through several songs, as unmoving as the dead he rested shoulder to shoulder with, lips moving silently to taste the lyrics. When the static in his mind grew too loud, he turned the radio off and laid in the dark nothing and picked at the scabs on his knuckles until they bled anew and proved he was still alive.

* * *

He was so high when he rediscovered the ingot of gold among his belongings, he couldn’t feel the cool metal under his fingers.

He took it to the bunker that was a grave, and he pitched it down into the dark, aborted tunnels where he wouldn’t have to look at it. His nerve endings might be dead to the world, but he could still feel the Courier’s fingers on the gold and smell the rancid decay of his influence. Let the darkness keep it.

It was just as much of an impulse decision to tear the PipBoy off his wrist and drop it amongst the mummified corpses as he left. He knew the password to the bunker by now, and it wasn’t as though he needed any information on the PipBoy. He had intended it to be a trophy, but suddenly it felt like a shackle.

He let it drop between a pair of scribes and he left feeling lighter: a burden relieved, but a tether untied.

* * *

_(And he went back later, and he felt his way blindly over the corpses with scabbed hands until he found the PipBoy again, and he sat in the darkness holding it, listening to the Courier_ _’s voice purring over the speakers. He still left it closed in the bunker when he left, but tucked with care near the door where he could find it again.)_

* * *

In a more sober moment, he lined up his Med-X reserves on the conference room table he used as a workbench. Seeing it that way, standing in mismatched single file rather than heaped in a canvas bag, was a constant reminder, like days on a calendar waiting to be crossed out.

_Twenty-six days until you die._

_Twenty-five days until you die._

_Twenty-three days until you die, because you got scared, didn_ _’t you? Got scared and got a little heavy-handed with the Med-X to make the world go away, and all it did was move up the timeline._

And he knew it was true, even if he refused to admit it. Too long between hits, and he got _sick._ Blinding headaches, bodyaches, restlessness, and a racing heart.

_Withdrawal._ He vaguely remembered members of his tribe going into withdrawal, when he was very young. Always the AB blood types, and in bad times, the A and B positives; they were low on the food chain, and the lowest priorities. He remembered their hollow, hungry eyes, and their clawlike hands as they grabbed at each other, squabbling over spent needles in the hopes that a few salvageable drops were left behind. Most of them bounced back to life with the next influx of chems, but a few… withdrawal wasn’t kind. There were casualties.

In this deep, and without another source of chems? He knew there was no coming back from this.

Twenty-two days until he died.

Make it twenty-one, he mused as he took up the syringe at the front of the line and searched for a good vein.

Didn’t really matter. He rested his chin in his palm as he laid the empty syringe on the tabletop and spun it in circles. It wasn’t fatalism to say that all things died; it was just fact. And there were worse ways to go. Worse…

He groaned, and flicked the needle away. It skittered across the table and dropped off the far edge. He undid the straps of his prosthetic leg with one hand and kicked it to the floor. With a fresh influx of Med-X in his veins, the rush of blood to his stump was more unpleasant than painful.

…Worse fates. Mmm. Yes. Lit on fire and dropped off the dam. Infection. _Brain cancer_. That’s a worse fate than an overdose, or a bullet to the head.

_It_ _’s the way of all flesh, the Courier said, and the sludge poured from his mouth, and the maggots squirmed in the black blood that caked his face._

Vulpes leaned sideways, suddenly ill, and he puked onto the floor. His hand shook violently as he wiped his mouth. He laid his head down on the table, squeezing his eyes shut. He may have overdone it on the Med-X. Exhaustion poured down on him like a waterfall, numbing his fingertips and making his heart stutter.

Worse fates. Twenty-one days.

* * *

He toppled from his chair. He _was_ _toppled_ from his chair. It barely roused him enough for it to register, and then there was a progression of dark, light, dark as he was dragged, unfeeling, through the halls of the bunker. A hulking dark figure stood above him, backlit by the ceiling lights and little more than a blurry mass to his unfocused eyes. He was aware of the pressure of hands under his arms as they pulled him along. One was bulkier than the other, with the hard angles of a power fist.

“…Lucius?” Vulpes slurred, confused. “Took… took you…” He trailed off as the thought escaped him. The figure above him adjusted their grip; he struggled as best he could, but his body refused to listen, and it had no effect. “’Ma kill you.”

“Sure you will.” The words drifted from miles and miles away, falling on his ears as a faded echo.

“ _Kill_ you. Lucius.” He gave another feeble jerk in their arms, making them grunt as their hands slipped an inch or so. They repositioned them more firmly and continued on. Vulpes tried to cling to his consciousness, but it was a struggle to keep his eyes open. His body was still adrift on gray clouds, far away.

His mind drifted to meet it.

* * *

When next he awoke, he was sprawled across a concrete floor in a very small cell. Above and behind him a motheaten mattress lay on a steel bunk that jutted from the wall. A sink and a toilet were jammed in the narrow gaps between either end of the bunk and the steel bars that ran ceiling to floor. Beyond the bars, he saw a hallway running perpendicular to his cell, cluttered with old crates and cardboard boxes.

On one of the crates sat a woman in dark robes. Her hood was thrown back to show her face, rectangular and youthful, and a little paler than the average wastelander. Her short dark hair was swept back, and she was watching him idly. A steaming plate of food sat in her lap; every now and then she would shove a forkful into her mouth and chew at him.

Vulpes blinked blearily at her, groaned, and rolled over to face the back wall of his cell. Great. He should have just killed himself when he had the chance.

“Wakey wakey,” the woman said through a mouthful of food. There was a slight clang as she stretched one leg out to kick lightly at the bars with her toe. “Come on. Up and at ‘em.”

“ _Futue te ipsum_ ,” Vulpes grumbled, taking mental inventory of his body. Head? Pounding, and stuffed with cotton. Joints? Filled with ground glass. Leg? Somehow numb and throbbing at the same time. He reached down with eyes shut and probed gently at the perpetual wounds left by his prosthesis.

The woman kicked the bars again.

“Speak English.” Beat. “Or Spanish. Do you know Spanish?”

Vulpes struggled to sit up. He leveled an awful glare at the woman.

“Fuck,” he said slowly, “you. Scribe girl.”

“You know I’m, like, thirty, right? _‘Scribe girl_ ,’” she mocked derisively, pitching her voice down and affecting stupidity. She rolled her eyes and scraped the food on her plate into a heap. The smell of it turned Vulpes’ stomach.

“Should have known you’d turn up. Everyone, coming out of the woodwork. Like. Like _insects_.”

“And see, that’s funny, because the last person I expected to see, _ever_ , in _my home_ , by the way, is Vulpes Inculta. And higher than a kite. But here we are.” She gestured flippantly at the bunker around them. What he could see of her smile in the dim light was tight and unhappy. He stretched out slightly; the back of his shoulders rested against the edge of the cot, and his remaining foot was barely an inch from the bars.

“You figured it out quickly.”

“Your face is glued to practically every wall in the Mojave,” the woman commented, unamused. “Between that and the Latin, it’s not exactly a big fucking revelation. Now tell me what you did with the bodies.”

“Mm. Bodies?”

“Don’t play dumb,” she said, and her tone was _sharp_. “I know the Courier was here. I know he… I know he killed everyone. Where are the bodies?”

Vulpes sneered at her, more to annoy her than out of any real heartfelt malice. He was still too deep in the Med-X for that. His fingertips tingled unpleasantly.

“The _only_ reason you’re alive right now,” the scribe said, setting aside her plate and leaning towards him, “is because I want to know what you did with the bodies. If you won’t tell me, I don’t see why I should keep you alive.”

“Go ahead and kill me, then.”

“Or maybe I’ll just let you stew in there,” she threatened, quickly changing tactics. “See how long you last without your chems.”

Vulpes couldn’t help it; he blinked. The woman laughed.

“You think I don’t know a junkie when I see one? I used to live under a literal bridge at a trading post. Half of _everyone_ was a junkie. I know what track marks look like. I also know what withdrawal looks like,” she added, more than a hint of cruelty hardening her smile. “It’s not pretty.”

 She leaned further forward, elbows resting on her knees. She wrapped her power fist over her bare left hand and loudly cracked her knuckles. He sullenly stared back at her for a minute.

“I moved the bodies,” he grumbled. “To the north bunker.”

“We’ll find out,” the scribe muttered, and with a shove to her knees she stood up and vanished down the hallway in a sweep of dark robes.

After she’d been gone a few minutes, Vulpes scuttled awkwardly along the floor until one shoulder was wedged against the bars. He peered as far down the hallways as he could; pipes and conduit cluttered the paneled walls, and the ceiling was just a steel grate. Most of the light filtered down through it from the room above, though small lights studded the upper edges of the wall every few yards. This seemed to be part of the service tunnel. His decision not to explore it seemed a little foolish, now. An oversight like this would have earned him a few lashes at least, once upon a time.

Chagrined, he sluggishly dragged himself back to the cot, then up onto it with a shaky push. He sat facing the bars of the cell, with his back pressed to the cool wall. Just getting up onto the cot had worn him out. Too much Med-X, or not enough.

He closed his eyes and tuned out, sinking back down into the chems. The bunker was quiet, save for the hum of electricity and the occasional ping and rattle in the pipes. He tried to fix the peace in his memory; soon enough, the hungry ache in his muscles and joints would leach back in. It would only get worse after that, if the scribe girl let him live that long. He still remembered low tribe members rocking and fidgeting in fits of nervous energy, sitting in their own shit and vomit until the dehydration finally killed them. If it didn’t kill _him_ , and the scribe didn’t either, he was resigned to ending it himself. A life of untempered fear was too unbearable to even imagine. He would rather die.

If that knowledge wasn’t comforting, it at least gave him perspective. He drank in this final moment of sedated calm like a condemned man savoring his last cigarette before execution.

There was a series of rumbles and clangs in the distance as the door of the bunker opened and closed again. After several more minutes, he heard footsteps coming back up the hallway toward him. He remained still with eyes closed until they stopped outside his cell. He opened them as the woman sat back down on the crate across from him. Her eyes were red. She held two wine bottles in her non-gauntleted hand, their necks twined in her fingers.

“Elder McNamara’s private stash,” she said with a soft laugh and some stifled sniffles. She fished a small pocket knife out of her robes and stabbed it into one of the bottles’ corks, freeing it with a few twists. “Here’s hoping it’s not all vinegar.”

Vulpes quietly ignored her as she lifted the bottle to her mouth and chugged an impressive amount of it.

“Tell me what happened,” she requested when she stopped to catch her breath, cheeks already blotchy and flushed. “Tell me everything from the battle onward.”

Maybe it was because he knew it wouldn’t matter, with his own death so near, or maybe it was because she looked as tired as he felt and some part of him was desperate for a kindred spirit, but he told her.

* * *

He left out the irrelevant details.

He didn’t tell her about the depth of the despair that filled him at the loss on the dam, or how it had never really left him. He didn’t tell her about the erosive terror of the Courier’s eyes on him, and how his entire journey through the Divide with Craig Boone was a blur of pain and misery and unspeakable horror in his memory. That there had been _so much relief_ in thinking he was going to die, when the infection had really set into his leg, and the shame that had come on the relief’s tail, because that was the relief of a coward too tired and afraid to fight anymore.

He couldn’t vocalize the confrontation with the Courier and his pack of night stalkers; when he reached that point in the story, his words, which until then had been clinical and concise but steady, ran dry. He stared into middle distance as he replayed what he remembered of the scene, and judged it too terrible to relive. The facts felt warped by the Courier’s very presence. Wet, and heavy, too poisonous to harvest and sow again in virgin soil.

The black sludge. The flies. The high-low voice, the kick-kick-kick of a paw against malfunctioning hardware. _Cackling_.

His lips twitched noiselessly as he grasped for words. The scribe waited in silence. She had emptied her first bottle, and was working on the second.

“You can feel when he’s near. It has a flavor,” Vulpes finally said, quiet, quiet. “Copper, and rot. Like the world is dead and bloated in the sun.”

He decided she didn’t need to know about his time in Goodsprings, falling apart even as he recuperated, or how his hands never seemed to stop trembling unless he was so chemmed up he couldn’t feel them, or how he’d become exactly the sort of creature he’d always scorned: rash, paranoid, dependent, and afraid. He didn’t tell her anything about Lucius, or Caesar, or the Legion, and the million ways they’d all betrayed each other. He didn’t tell her about visiting the Dam, or the Lucky 38. He didn’t tell her about Arcade Gannon or Rose of Sharon Cassidy.

He didn’t tell her about the twenty one days remaining, even if he suspected she already knew.

Here’s what he did tell her. He and Craig Boone had fought the Courier, at the Dam and the Divide. He told her, frankly, the Courier had been killed. Just as frankly, he told her he had come back in the body of a night stalker. He told her that he was separated from the sniper, and that his leg was amputated. He told her he spent time as a courier and a caravan guard. He told her that the Courier sicced night stalkers on him, and that he came to the bunker to escape him.

That was when she finally interrupted. Her voice was rough; she had to cough into her sleeve before she could manage intelligible words.

“Why’d you move the bodies, though? Why’d- why would you move them?” She scrubbed at her running nose with the back of her hand. “I don’t… Why wouldn’t you just leave ‘em outside? I dunno, or, or. Or just, puttin’ ‘em in one room and closing the door, I don’t. Why?” She leaned towards him very slightly. “Why?”

“…I don’t know,” he said, knowing it wasn’t quite the truth. He always had his reasons.

Silence fell between them. The pipes grumbled to each other overhead. Somewhere nearby, a fluorescent light flickered between dim and very dim. The woman nodded, slowly, introspectively. She nodded again, quicker and more decided.

She slipped off the crate, steadied herself with a hand against the wall, and she walked away.

“Wait,” Vulpes croaked after her, his voice worn ragged by so much talking after months of disuse. “The Med-X. Bring-…”

But she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my friends! Thank you all so much for reading and leaving me comments and kudos. I'm so grateful that you're here! A hundred thousand words ain't nothing to sneeze at :O
> 
> I would like to take this opportunity to remind you all one more time that within the next couple weeks I will probably be putting this fic on a brief hiatus while I work on a couple other projects. Don't worry! You should enjoy those projects, too :) Just be sure to subscribe to the "The Way of All Flesh" series if you haven't already.


	18. Chapter 18

The scribe did, eventually, come back.

Vulpes had no way of knowing how much time had gone by, except by the measure of his own growing anxiety, and the drumming of his fingers against his arms crossed over his chest, and the deep-seated pain building under his skin as his cells screamed for chems.

When he heard her footsteps coming slowly back up the hallway, it took all he had not to fling himself at the bars.

“Med-X,” was the first thing he said, rocking forward on the bunk, yearning. “Please,” he choked out next.

The woman wasn’t wearing her robes. Instead, she was wearing what looked like Paladin under-armor: a black tank top, and solid tan colored pants tucked into her boots. She looked harrowed; hung over.

“Please,” Vulpes begged again, beyond shame.

The scribe looked at him for a moment, then tossed a capped needle through the bars to him. He scrabbled for it the second it hit the cot. His hands shook so violently with need and furor, he missed the vein entirely before he found it with a second jab. It was nothing to ignore how the scribe watched him, when all he could register was the relief of Med-X in his starved system. He still felt like shit, with a sharp headache and general malaise, but he didn’t _hunger_.

He couldn’t quite find it in himself to thank her, though. He was still in a cell.

“Honestly,” the woman croaked, leaning gingerly against the crate until she was half-sitting on it, “I don’t know what to do with you. I wasn’t planning on staying here long, which makes this extra weird. What _can_ I do? Just leave you in there to die when I’m done here? I’m not _that_ much of a bitch.” She nudged the empty wine bottles still sitting on the floor where she’d left them with her toe. One of them toppled, and rolled in a broad semi-circle until it hit the wall.

Vulpes dropped his needle off the edge of the cot onto the floor, and shifted in the cot to lean in the back corner, shoulder turned to her.

“On the one hand,” she continued unprompted, “you’re Vulpes Inculta.” She let that rest, with all the associated qualifiers unsaid: slaver, murderer, twisted son of a bitch. “On the other hand, you look like you’ve got all the strength and endurance of wet newspaper. I could kick your ass from here to next Tuesday if I wanted to.”

She wasn’t wrong. Without her robes, she somehow looked larger; her shoulders were solid and squared, and her arms were sharply contoured with lean muscle. She wasn’t wearing her power fist, but she wouldn’t need it to lay him out, in his current condition.

“We’re both lucky this cell is even here. Would have had to chain you to a radiator or something without it. It wasn’t in the original bunker, you know. The cell. It got added, like, eighty years ago. Some sort of fight or something happened between two paladins, and suddenly they had a dead guy on their hands and a paladin they needed to keep locked up until things were sorted out. A bunch of scribes got sent down here with welders and scrap steel to turn a janitor’s closet into a holding cell. So, voila, I’ve got a cage to put random Legion spies in. The thing is, though,” the woman went on, pinching the bridge of her nose and grimacing against her headache, “I’ve got stuff I need to get done, and I wasn’t expecting to have to babysit. This is really inconvenient.”

Vulpes blinked, and turned his head to glower at her in vague disbelief. It wasn’t like he was enjoying this any more than she was. She caught the look and nodded in concession.

“Yeah, yeah.” She kicked the other bottle over, and rolled it back and forth under her foot. “I don’t know. I have to think about this. I think I might still be drunk.” With a sigh, she stood up, kicking the bottle over to clatter against its twin. “I’ll come back later with food and more Med-X.”

With that, she left again, feet scuffing along the floor.

* * *

Elsewhere in the bunker, music played. The treble echoed down the hallways, though the lyrics and most of the tune was lost. Vulpes listened long enough to realize it wasn’t live radio, but some sort of recording.

He did his best to tune it out and picked at his scabs some more.

* * *

Time passed. The woman returned. This time, she held two plates of food in her hands. She set one on her crate; the other, she slid through a narrow slot under the bars of the cell, followed by another single-use syringe of Med-X. Vulpes slid to the edge of the bunk and bent to retrieve them.

The Med-X, he set aside for later. The food, he examined skeptically. The woman was already perched back on her crate and eating.

“Old military MREs- meals ready-to-eat,” she said through a mouthful of… potatoes? “We kept a store of them in case of emergencies. It was enough to keep the whole Brotherhood fed for a year, once. Now that it’s just me- and you, I guess- it’s enough for years. Not,” she added as she watched Vulpes poke at the food and finally taste it, “that it’s haute cuisine or anything. But it beats eating scorpion every day.”

It wasn’t pretty. Vulpes could easily acknowledge that. The flavor, though, wasn’t bad. He resigned himself to slowly chewing whatever it was he had just put in his mouth and just being grateful it was edible.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” the woman said, shifting gears. “How long were you living here before I turned up?”

There was a pause before Vulpes realized she actually expected a response. He shrugged minutely. Several seconds later, he hazarded a guess.

“Two weeks. Three.”

“Right,” the scribe said, nodding slowly. She tapped the tines of her fork against her plate as she thought. _Tink tink tink tink tink tink-_ and she stopped, to point her fork at him in an idle gesture. “And you didn’t destroy anything, or try to kill anyone, or anything like that.” Vulpes stilled as he realized the direction she was headed.

“You’re going to let me out.”

“I think I might let you out,” the woman said, as though Vulpes hadn’t spoken at all. He turned his face away to avoid rolling his eyes. “You can even stay in the bunker… _if_ you promise not to try anything.”

He cocked his head slightly.

“Try what.”

“ _Anything_. You even breathe weird and I’ll pop your head like a balloon.” She set her plate in her lap to count points on her fingers. “No trying to kill me. No trying to sabotage anything. No getting in my way. And I swear to god-” She held both hands up, “-if you even _think_ about touching me, I will punch you so hard in the ‘nads that only dogs will be able to hear you when you talk.”

Vulpes wrinkled his nose at her description, mildly disgusted.

“I want nothing to do with you,” he grumbled.

“I know you assholes were all about the raping and pillaging.”

“Raping never interested me,” Vulpes said dryly, “and I think we can both agree that pillaging is out of my reach.” He set aside his plate of food to curl back in the corner of his bunk.

“Really. ‘Cause everything I heard made it sound like you assholes all clubbed women over the head and dragged them off by the ankle to be sex slaves. Unless- w _ait_ ,” the woman said, leaning forward suddenly to stare at him through the bars. “Are you _gay_?”

“ _No._ ” He bristled at the assertion. He just wasn’t _interested_. Back in his hormonal youth, he’d visited the females in the slave quarters once or twice- but _only_ once or twice. He’d left feeling inexplicably and aimlessly disgusted. Something about the animal _grossness_ of human bodies, in the vacuous depression of a post-coital crash. Now, as a grown man, there was just too much on his plate without also introducing the mess that was _interpersonal relations_. It never seemed worth it. Too much risk, for far too little reward, when he’d never quite seen the appeal in the first place.

“I mean, you haven’t stared at my tits _once,_ _”_ the scribe kept arguing. “That’s a record.” She gasped. “ _Oh-_ or are you in the closet?”

“I’m in a cell,” Vulpes growled, growing more and more irritated.

“No, I mean- _secretly_ gay. You’re gay but nobody knows about it.”

“I’m _not_.”

“Well, I am,” she said, finally leaning back. “Not closeted. Gay. You gonna fight me over it?”

“ _I don_ _’t care_ ,” he said emphatically, beyond frustrated. He didn’t _approve_ of it, that was true, but it also just wasn’t his business anymore. He had bigger worries than who was sticking what where.

“Hrm.” The exchange seemed to have soured the woman’s mood somewhat. She was watching Vulpes carefully, with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. “Tell you what. You think about whether or not you’ll behave if I let you out of there, and I’ll think about whether or not I believe it, and then we’ll reevaluate.”

She shoved the last of her food into her mouth and stood up. She watched him a moment longer while she chewed and picked up the empty wine bottles she’d left behind on her first visit. Then, she left again. A few minutes later, the music turned back on and rang its tinny voice through the bunker.

Vulpes settled back into his bunk again, deeply disgruntled, but also harboring a flicker of something that felt disturbingly like hope.

* * *

“So when did you start on the Med-X?” The scribe asked on her next visit. She was perched on her crate, legs crossed. She didn’t bring food this time, or booze, but Vulpes had his suspicions she wasn’t entirely sober. Music still echoed from elsewhere in the bunker.

He sat wedged in his corner, staring straight ahead to the wall opposite him, barely six feet away. He shrugged.

“But it was because of your leg, or something, right?”

“Or something.”

“I’m just a little confused,” the woman said. “It’s a big jump to go from eating plant dust to shooting up chemicals. Aren’t you people supposed to be really against that?”

“’ _You people,_ ’” he scoffed quietly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I offend you?” the woman mocked, rolling her eyes. Vulpes clenched his jaw and forcefully exhaled, still refusing to look at her.

“Despite Caesar’s best efforts, the Legion was never a monolith.” It was a swerve, and though true, not something Vulpes had ever been particularly happy about. The idea of a monolithic culture had a certain appeal. That didn’t, however, mean he was interested in humoring the woman.

She called him on it.

“So you expect me to believe there were liberal minded Legionaries running around, gooped up on gop, and Caesar was totally okay with all of this. And you expect me to trust you.”

Vulpes grimaced, and looped back in an attempt to distract and disorient.

“Healing powder only takes the edge off. Med-X dulls everything. When healing powder doesn’t work, switching to Med-X isn’t a ‘big jump.’”

“Dunno.” She unfolded her legs, still sitting, and crossed them again so the leg that had been on bottom was now on top. “Still kind of seems like one to me.”

“Are you going to let me out?” Vulpes asked abruptly.

“Dunno. Still thinking about it.” She held a knee in each hand, elbows winged outward. “How did you know this bunker was here?”

He glanced balefully over at her for a brief moment.

“I’ve been here before.”

The air between them chilled.

“…Excuse me?”

“I’ve _been_ here before,” Vulpes repeated a little more sharply. He glowered at the woman again, and she glowered back. “I was following the Courier. Scouting. He led me here.”

“Of course he did,” she grumbled. She let her arms slide inward, crossing, until her elbows were propped against her calves and she was bent forward over her legs. “And when was this?”

Vulpes stared blankly at her for several seconds.

“You know when it was,” he finally said, looking her in the eye.

There was a pregnant lull in their exchange. From somewhere in the tunnels above, a brass quintet was jauntily blaring out a jazz number.

“You followed him here, and you just… let him kill everyone?”

“I’m a soldier, not a _philanthropist_ ,” he spat, settling back in his corner again. Quieter, he amended, “ _Was_ a soldier.” A bitter pause. “You’re a greater fool than I thought, if you think I could have stopped him. I didn’t even know what he was doing until it was done.”

“You could have tried.”

“Why? You think the Legion would have spared your Brotherhood?” He picked at the frayed thread around a moth hole in his blanket with vicious focus. “At the time it seemed like providence.”

“Fuck you,” the woman said flatly, standing up. She dug in her pocket and threw another syringe of Med-X at him through the bars. He flinched when it hit him, then gingerly reached out to pick it up, squirrel it away. “I could have just killed you,” she said quietly, leaning close enough that her forehead was nearly pressed against the bars. “Remember that when you’re shooting up.”

She started walking away. Without moving from where he sat, Vulpes called after her.

“It was war. Do you really think the Brotherhood would have spared _us?_ ”

Just for a moment, her footsteps faltered.

* * *

She came back some time after he’d used the Med-X she left him. The chems still had him loose and drowsy when she appeared before his cell holding his crutches.

“So what’ll it be?” she asked. “Are you going to cause problems if I let you out?”

“You hate the Courier,” Vulpes said. “I hate the Courier.” He idly pulled at the loose thread in the ancient blanket spread over his cot. He had industriously enlarged the moth hole by several inches. “That’s all that really matters.”

The scribe raised a hand with forefinger extended toward the ceiling. She twitched it in the air, acknowledging the point before finally responding.

“Weird thing is, I agree.” Without looking away from him, she fished a key from her pocket and stepped up to the bars. Vulpes observed from his bunk, making no sudden movements. She unlocked the cell door; it swung open without even a squeak. She stayed standing on the far side of the bars, but she extended an arm in, holding his crutches out to him.

Cautious, he took them.

“I don’t really trust you with that torture device you call a prosthesis yet,” she said as Vulpes slowly, slowly pulled himself up from the bunk and onto his crutches. “But that could change. This is _all_ conditional,” she reminded him. “You cross me, and I’ll kick your ass.”

They stood face to face. Vulpes listed slightly on his crutches; the woman stood with one hand on her hip, blocking his exit.

She extended a hand.

“I should probably introduce myself, right? I mean, you know who I am, but, you know. _Etiquette_ or whatever. My name’s Veronica.”

Vulpes looked at the offered hand, and then back up at Veronica’s face. Grimacing, he unhappily reached out his hand to shake hers, only for it to be quickly enveloped and crushed in her grip. He couldn’t help but wince and try to pull his hand away; she smiled dangerously.

“Can’t say it’s good to meet you, but here we are. After you.”

She released him and stepped away from the cell door, waving him ahead of her. Together, they went back upstairs.

* * *

“So here’s the deal,” Veronica said as she pointed Vulpes into a seat in his makeshift command center. He dropped into it and tried not to look too resentful. “The barracks and common spaces are fair game. Mess hall is off limits- too many knives- but I’ll leave food outside where you can get to it. You don’t go in the labs unless I’m with you. The doors won’t even open, so don’t try. I’ve also rebooted and redirected the security system, just in case you were thinking about misbehaving. _I wouldn_ _’t recommend it_. Your shit’s locked up, along with the infirmary and the arsenal.” She paused to wave a finger at him. “You might be out of the cell, but you’re not scot-free. If you want _privileges_ , you’re going to earn them.”

Vulpes turned his head to look at the heap of Med-X that still sat, untouched, on the table.

“I’m not heartless.” This drew a brief scowl from Vulpes, who crossed his arms. Veronica didn’t care. She set to work clearing off part of the table. “I just don’t want you shivving me first chance you get.”

Vulpes stared, uncertain what “shivving” was, but moved on to the more pertinent question.

“Then why even let me out?”

“If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave.” Veronica stepped away from the table, towards the door, then paused. “Although, I did change the bunker passwords, so if you leave, you aren’t coming back. One second.”

She left the room. After a moment, there were clattering noises from down the hall, and then the scribe returned.

“I know I don’t look like it,” she said as she carried a computer terminal into the room, dragging the cables along behind her, “but I’m really tired. World weary, I guess.” The scribe carefully lowered the terminal onto the table and whipped the bundled cords to straighten them out before plugging them into ports in the wall. Vulpes watched from his chair, reaching out for a plastic-capped syringe of Med-X to fidget with.

“It’s just, all the shit with Christine and Father Elijah, and then Elder McNamara, and the _Courier_ , and… well, this,” she rambled, gesturing to the empty bunker without looking up from the monitor, “And I guess I just… I don’t know. You gotta pick your fights. I guess that’s why I let you out. I just want to do what I came here to do, and leave. I don’t care about _your_ bullshit.”

“It’s your bullshit too,” he said. “You’re not free from the Courier just because you walked away.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t seen him in _ages_. And you’ll forgive me if I’m not totally sold on your story. Putting his brain in a night stalker… I mean, _how_.” Vulpes glanced darkly at her, but said nothing, just continued to turn the needle over and over in his hands. “So, yeah. Kind of feels like I’m free.”

She pulled a duffel bag from the floor up onto the table next to the computer, and unzipped it to pull out a rumpled black jumpsuit with pale gray accents and armor paneling. Vulpes set down the needle and stared.

“I recognize that,” he said, even as Veronica pried open the back panel with a screwdriver to expose circuitry. She looked up from her work, her surprise clear in the arch of her brow.

“Really? I only saw the Courier wear it once.” She pulled an electronic _something_ from the duffel bag, plugged it into her computer, and then plugged some pulled cables from the suit into it.

“So did I.” He was _certain;_ this was the armor the Courier had been wearing when he returned from wherever he had disappeared to in the time just before the battle. “How did you…”

“I stole it,” she replied easily, with no remorse. “I was long gone by the time the Courier left to start shit at the Dam, but I didn’t go far. I waited until I was sure everyone was out, and then I robbed him blind. Fucker deserves worse.” She hit a few keys on the computer with force, and pressed the cables more firmly into their ports.

“That was you,” Vulpes breathed, remembering the mess he’d walked into when he visited the Courier’s casino. Veronica didn’t ask; she was too entrenched in her work to wonder.

“He killed my _entire_ family. If anyone can understand that, it’s you, right?” She glanced at him, inscrutable. “The closest I could get to payback was ruining his perfect little gun collection. Ha. He didn’t even think to revoke my building access. I sold almost everything I hauled out, split the caps with Cass, and laid low for a while at a trading post outside the city until I figured out what my next move was.”

“What is your next move?” he asked on pure reflex, slipping once again into old roles. Gather information. Execute orders. He shook his head to banish the ghost of his old life.

“I had a girlfriend before- before everything. It’s complicated. But the Courier says she’s still alive, and she feels like she has to stand guard over… something dangerous. But I don’t know where she is or how to get to her, and the way the Courier told it, there’s a real nasty security system there. Some sort of weird tech. That’s why I need this,” she said, patting the suit. She flashed a smug smile at Vulpes, which faded as she registered his blank expression.

“You don’t get it.” She jabbed a finger at the exposed circuitry of the suit without touching it. “This thing is a prototype stealth suit with on-board AI. Artificial Intelligence!” she all but shouted, giddy. “With a little reprogramming, she can be repurposed for data analysis, or, or even hacking, recoding. Just imagine what she could do once I integrate her to the bunker’s systems and expand her knowledge base. With her help I can get past the security, find Christine, and figure out a way to lock down whatever Christine’s guarding and bring her home.”

“She,” he echoed.

“Oh,” Veronica stumbled. “Uh. Yeah. She. I call her Vicki.” She tugged another narrow cable from the suit and connected it directly to the computer. “Say hi, Vicki.”

“ _Hello_ ,” a voice said meekly through the computer’s speakers, and Vulpes recoiled, reaching for a knife that wasn’t on his belt.

“You’ve seen the Courier take over New Vegas with a computer,” Vulpes murmured in horror, “and now you want to give another computer all the pre-War weaponry and knowledge your Brotherhood has hoarded?”

“Just to look at! She can’t actually do anything with it,” Veronica said in a rush, laying her hands protectively over the suit. Besides, _I_ _’m_ programming her. I’m not going to give her nuclear launch capabilities or anything. Most of our archives are just random blueprints for mundane shit anyway. What do you think she’s gonna do, threateningly fabricate a dehumidifier at you?”

“The _hubris,_ ” he breathed in disbelief. “Thinking that this could _ever_ be a good idea.”

“What did I tell you about staying out of my way?”

Vulpes sighed, and returned to his fidgeting with a newfound sense of dread.

“ _Are you angry with me?_ ” the stealth suit asked. She- _it! IT!-_ sounded scared and insecure, and it somehow disturbed Vulpes more than if it were completely emotionless and clinical. He trusted this machine as much as he trusted Yes-Man.

“Nobody’s angry,” Veronica soothed it, patting the suit before returning to her typing. “I’m going to make a backup of your systems now. It’ll take a few minutes.”

He could only scowl at his hands. She shouldn’t be treating this _machine_ like it was a person. It wasn’t.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He exhaled, and returned his attention to Veronica. She had paused in her work, fingers still resting on the keyboard, and she was frowning pensively as she looked up to meet his eye.

“If you hate the Courier so much, why did you stop fighting against him? You claim you saw him in the Divide, and then you just… gave up?”

“…I can’t even walk, and you expect me to singlehandedly wage war against the Courier?”

“So get a better prosthetic leg,” Veronica suggested, like it was the easiest and most obvious thing in the world. “I’m just saying. Sounds like you gave up pretty easy.”

“He _turns invisible_.”

“I’m still not seeing the issue here. You know how many infrared goggles I’ve seen over the years? Shit, I’ve got the schematics for, like, five different kinds. Night stalkers bend light, not heat. Just get the right tools for the job and it should be easy as pie.”

“Then you do it.”

“ _He didn_ _’t want to be my friend,_ ” the timid stealth suit squeaked abruptly.

“He’s an asshole,” Veronica said, the same moment Vulpes grumbled “Stop talking.”

“ _He_ _’s_ an asshole, too,” the scribe added, waving a screwdriver in Vulpes’ direction before opening up another panel of the suit.

She went back to work, and they fell into a silence that was nearly comfortable. Vulpes eventually closed his eyes, counting his sluggish heartbeats with a finger pressed in the crook of his elbow while he considered the concept of seeing the invisible.

* * *

Night fell, according to Veronica, who set aside her work to go heat up another pair of MREs. They ate in relative peace, sitting across from each other; Veronica rambled on about people and places Vulpes didn’t care about, and he silently ignored her while he tried to name the protein he was pushing around his plate.

When they were finished, Veronica cleared the dishes, only to return from the mess hall with a bottle of vodka, a plastic jug of purple colored liquid, and two glasses.

“I invented this one when I was seventeen,” she explained without provocation as she poured the purple liquid into the glasses and spiked them heavily with the vodka. “I call it: Regret. For reasons that may become obvious.”

She pushed one of the glasses towards Vulpes. He didn’t reach for it. Even from where he sat, he could smell its strange, chemically approximated fruit flavoring.

“I’m not drinking that.”

“Come on, don’t make me drink alone,” the scribe protested, sinking into her chair and kicking her boots up onto the table’s edge. She gulped down most of her cocktail in one go, then grimaced. “If we drink together, it’s social. If I drink alone, it’s depression.”

“It smells rotten,” Vulpes complained.

“Such a baby,” she grumbled into her cup as she finished her drink. She reached out for the vodka bottle and poured a shot into her empty glass. Then she slid it Vulpes’ way and snagged the remaining noxious Regret for herself. “Vodka, neat. Now stop whining and drink.”

Sighing, Vulpes pulled the glass to him, lifted it, and knocked it back. The look he gave the scribe when he set the glass back on the table was one of flat, gloomy annoyance.

“Okay, I was expecting that to be a little funnier,” Veronica admitted, clearly disappointed. “Like a wince or something. A spit take, if I was lucky.” She offered Vulpes the vodka; he wordlessly reached out to take the bottle and pour himself another shot. “I thought the Legion didn’t allow drinking.”

“I was a Frumentarius. There were exemptions.”

“Spy. Right.” She fell silent, her glass held to her lips. Vulpes drank his second shot, then stared at his own empty glass, turning it in his fingers. “I think,” Veronica pondered after half a minute, “that this might still be depression drinking, even though there’s two of us.”

“It’s not a celebration,” Vulpes replied in bland agreement, turning his head slightly to look at his dwindling supply of Med-X again. He might be able to stretch it out to twenty two days, if he tried. He didn’t know why he would want to, though.

“It’s just so hard to sleep,” the woman blurted, drawing his attention back to her. “Knowing that everyone I knew, they just… died. Here. When I’m _doing_ something it’s easier to ignore, but once it’s just me and it gets quiet, it just feels like a tomb. When I was a kid, this place was _never_ quiet. It used to drive me crazy; there was no privacy. Somebody was always, like, three feet away. And now it’s like this. And I wasn’t here when it happened. I just keep thinking of what it must have been like in those last minutes…”

“You wouldn’t have been able to help them,” Vulpes provided, surprising himself. He set the glass back on the table and began picking at the vodka label with his thumbnail. The alcohol burned hot in his stomach.

“No,” Veronica agreed. “But I still feel guilty for not dying with them. It’s stupid.”

“Yes, it is. What purpose would that have served?”

“The purpose of not feeling like it’s my fault everyone is dead except me?” She cocked her head sharply, challenging him. “Don’t tell me you feel great about watching the Legion get wrecked and coming out of it fine.”

“This is fine?” he asked her, instantly rankled. He turned in his seat to face her more directly. “A crippled addict, hiding in a bunker from a lunatic? That’s _fine_?”

“Okay, maybe fine is a stretch! But seriously- you don’t feel _anything_ about everything that happened? You didn’t lose anyone important to you?”

“No,” he sulked. He tore a shred of the label away, and let it fall in a curl on the tabletop. “And I have no desire to die.”

“Yeah? Well, _I_ _’m_ convinced! Hiding in a hole in the ground, wallowing in self pity, self-medicating, and waiting for me to kill you.” Veronica leaned back with a huff, waving her hands dismissively before picking up her glass again. “You said it first.”

He didn’t dignify her with a response. More shreds of label fell to the tabletop, until Veronica grabbed the bottle by the neck and pulled it away from him.

“Just, I keep expecting Ramos to show up and give me hell again. Or to hear Watkins’ fucking shrill laughter or something. But they’re gone.”

Vulpes said nothing. He tipped his empty glass with a finger on its rim and let it rock back into its standing position again. Tip and return, over and over until he pushed the glass an inch from his hands with a flick of his fingertips and gathered up his crutches.

“Where are you going?” Veronica asked.

He didn’t answer her. Instead, he leaned back over the table to grab a vial of Med-X, then crutched out into the dark hallway, leaving her alone.

* * *

He returned to the barracks he’d slept in before his confinement to the cell, carefully ignoring how the turrets turned noiselessly on their pedestals to track him. He hadn’t even closed the door before Veronica’s music started up again. The way it echoed through the steel structure and the empty halls, it reached him as an unintelligible siren song. The melody rose and fell, rolled and faded like waves.

Siren songs didn’t work on him. Vulpes shuddered and turned towards his bunk, relaxing when the automatic door slid down from the ceiling to block out the sound.

* * *

There were twenty days remaining before the Med-X ran out. He requested his pack from Veronica, and she denied him.

“There’s nothing in there you need,” she said when he came to her, not even looking up from the green glow of her computer terminal. “You’re in the land of plenty. You need food? You got it. You need clothes? You got it. But you don’t need a hunting knife or a pistol or a million caps- which, by the way, I’m _very_ curious about.”

“I don’t want weapons,” Vulpes mumbled, frustrated. He looked down at his foot as he repositioned himself on his crutches. What he really wanted was his map, now worn enough that the ink was flaking off at the folds. He couldn’t leave the bunker physically, but with his map, he could at least let his mind wander.

“Well, what do you want.” She was still focused on her work, and questioned him without looking at him.

He stood silently for a moment. Then, he hobbled to his Med-X and took one of the brown glass bottles and a roll of new syringes.

He took them back to the barracks he’d claimed for himself.

Nineteen days remained.

* * *

“So what’s with the cleaning?” Veronica asked when there were eighteen days remaining.

She was still working on reprogramming the stealth suit AI, swearing at her computer and reassuring the stealth suit in turns. Vulpes had found a mop in a supply locker, and first cleaned up his dried vomit, then proceeded to mop the rest of the room. He moved on crutches clamped in place with his elbows, shuffling along as he mopped.

“What else am I supposed to do with my time?” he grumbled, pushing his bucket of sudsy water along the floor with the mop head, as though he was playing shuffleboard with it.

“… Okay, yeah, that’s fair.” She sighed, and leaned her chin on her elbow. “You know, I’m really surprised you haven’t tried to kill me.”

“To what end.” He plunged the mop into the bucket with a little more force than necessary, splashing soapy water across the floor.

“I don’t know. You have a reputation, is all. Scary Legion doghead man or whatever.”

“Rumors spread by the NCR, no doubt,” he grumbled, turning his back on her as he mopped. “Everyone who actually _knew_ me is dead.”

Except Gaius.

He flinched, and mopped with renewed vigor.

“I thought you didn’t lose anyone in the battle,” Veronica accused, typing again. “Or were you lying?”

Vulpes turned on his heel.

“What do you _want_ from me?” he asked. “I told you everything and you don’t believe me. I can stay, but I’m not free, and I’m subjected to your endless _questioning_. I can leave, but without my gear I die. What do you _want_?”

Veronica stared, a little shocked by his outburst.

“I don’t want to be alone in here,” she said quietly. “Anything is better than being alone in here.”

“I’m not your _friend,_ ” he hissed, shoving his bucket further along the floor and nearly tipping it over. He resumed mopping, more aggressive than before, slowly progressing toward the door. “I don’t care about you.”

“Well, you’re not as heartless as you pretend to be!” From the sound of it, Veronica had returned to her programming. She hammered at the keys like they’d wronged her. “If you were, you wouldn’t have moved the bodies into the other bunker. You would have just thrown them outside.”

Vulpes gave his bucket a violent push, and this time, when it slid out into the hall, it toppled. Scummy water washed out across the panel flooring. Rage needled through him, and he flung his mop aside to swing a crutch at the empty bucket and send it clattering down the dim hall. Veronica stopped typing, and the quiet rang loud in his ears, screaming over his quickening pulse.

He stalked up the hallway, towards the bunker door. If he couldn’t get fresh air, he could at least get in proximity to it.

* * *

When the scribe eventually came looking for him, she found him sitting against the wall opposite the bunker door, staring blankly at it with one knee drawn to his chest, and his truncated leg half-curled beneath him. This was the spot where Vulpes had pried up the body of a paladin.

 _She_ wouldn’t know that, with all the cleaning Vulpes had done, but _he_ was keenly aware.

“Look,” Veronica said, but she didn’t finish her statement. Instead she lingered awkwardly in the mouth of the corridor, scuffing her toe against the floor and focusing intently on her own gauntleted hand.

Vulpes ignored her to continue staring at the bunker door, as if he expected it to open on its own. For a brief moment when he’d stormed off in his fit of rage, he’d considered leaving the bunker, even knowing there was no coming back. However, he had no weapons and no chems. He wasn’t even wearing his armor. Suicide might be the natural conclusion to his current predicament, but he had standards. An overdose or a well aimed bullet were preferable by far to slowly wasting in the desert sun or being killed by the first scorpion he happened upon.

“Look,” Veronica tried again. “I’m sorry.”

He continued to ignore her. She kicked her foot again and sighed.

“I’m _sorry_.

“He would have eaten them,” he said, finally admitting it to both her and himself.

“Huh?”

“The bodies. He would have eaten them, if I left them outside.” Vulpes wasn’t making eye contact. “That’s why I moved them.”

“…I saw them,” Veronica said, serious. “They… weren’t fresh.”

“He would have eaten them,” Vulpes asserted again. “On… principal. He _consumes_.” He turned his face away from the scribe, looking deeper into the shadows.

“The Courier isn’t _here_.”

“He doesn’t _need_ to be!” Vulpes insisted, well aware of how he sounded, finally turning his head to look at her. “He has night stalkers everywhere, he- he’s as much _mythos_ as he is flesh and blood. I wasn’t going to let him see me feeding him- _supporting_ him. It’s the principal. It’s the _symbolism_. He’s always watching- you think he doesn’t know you’re here? He just hasn’t decided what to _do_ with you yet! That, or you’re playing right into his hands.”

“Then so are you,” Veronica said, less contrite and more argumentative. “You’re insane.”

“Yes,” Vulpes agreed, without specifying which statement he was agreeing with.

Veronica’s brow furrowed with open consternation. After a moment, she lifted one hand, drawing attention to a scrap of paper she was holding.

“I wrote down the new code for the bunker door,” she said. “You can come and go as you like. I put your gear in the barracks.”

Rather than approach Vulpes, she slowly squatted to place the paper on the floor. When she stood, she was still watching him carefully. Another long second later, and she turned and retreated down the hallway again, leaving Vulpes alone once again.

* * *

Seventeen days. But not really. Vulpes was tired.

True to her word, Veronica had returned his gear. Well, most of it. His weapons were still missing. _You_ _’ll get your guns back when I leave,_ read a note she’d left on top of his pack. When he sorted through his things, though, the caps were still there, and his rations, and his map.

That morning, he sat for a long time on the edge of his cot, absentmindedly rubbing his thumb over the velvet surface of the folded map as he stared at the wall opposite, thinking, not thinking.

It was impossible to know the time, in the perpetual twilight of the bunker, but when Vulpes stepped outside into the glaring sun, he guessed it was nearly noon. He moved slowly on his crutches to the north bunker. On earlier trips, he’d traveled between bunkers at a brisk lurching jog, gun in hand. This time, he was in no hurry. What did it matter, if something happened to him?

The PipBoy was waiting where he’d left it, just inside the door and tucked along the wall. He didn’t slip it onto his wrist, but he did turn on its light and navigate his way down the double rows of Brotherhood mummies to the deeper tunnel. He panned the light of the PipBoy along the concrete floor, searching, and then- there! Blue-white light glinting off of buttery yellow. He crouched down to pick up the ingot of gold he’d abandoned there, and with both the PipBoy and the gold tucked against the handles of his crutches, he hobbled back outside and towards the Brotherhood bunker again.

When he reached the bunker door, he took the slip of paper with the passcode on it from his pocket and punched it into the keypad. With an electrical buzz and the heavy thunk of locks disengaging, the door popped open.

Back into purgatory.

He returned to his barracks before he went to speak with the scribe. First, he went to one of the lockers that stood along the wall and took a flashlight from it, flicking the switch on and off to be sure it worked. He put it in his pocket. Then he went to look over his gear, spread across a cot. He let his hand trail over the thousands of caps he’d brought, listening to them rattle, then pocketed the nearly-full bottle of Med-X he had started into two days prior, along with several syringes. He stuffed the folded map into the other pocket alongside the flashlight.

The gold and the PipBoy he carried in hand, not quite willing to let them get too close to his person. When he slipped into the chair across from Veronica, he immediately laid them out in the center of the table, then pulled the map out of his pocket to lay beside them. She stopped work to look up at them, then at Vulpes, wary and perplexed. He stared intently back, with the clarity that came with existential peace. She looked _exhausted._ Her eyelids drooped; there were dark circles under her eyes. Her lips were chapped and split where she’d been gnawing at them. He wondered, briefly, where she’d been sleeping, then _if_ she’d been sleeping.

“What the fuck is this?” Veronica finally asked. He blinked as he refocused, glancing down at the items on the table. He thought for a moment, then pushed the gold ingot towards her. She picked it up, squinting with suspicion as she turned it over, reading the seal that had been hammered into it and running her fingers over the notch hacked into its edge.

“This is how the Courier killed your people,” Vulpes said. Immediately, Veronica dropped it back on the table, looking sharply back up at Vulpes, who continued. “He stopped the ventilation fan with it. It belongs to you.”

“I don’t want it,” she argued, pushing it back towards him, but Vulpes was firm.

“It’s _yours_.” He slid it back across the table at her. It skidded to a halt beside her computer, and she didn’t reach for it again.

“…It said it was from the Sierra Madre,” Veronica prompted with some hesitation. The logo wasn’t visible, face down against the table, but she didn’t flip the ingot to get another look. “Is that true?”

Item number two. The PipBoy. He laid a hand over it, and slid it a few inches towards the scribe before withdrawing his hand.

“The Courier’s PipBoy,” he announced, eyes never leaving her face. “Wherever he went, he took notes. Maps, keys, passwords… it’s all there.”

“Where did you get that?” Veronica glanced around the room in confusion, as if expecting this to be some sort of trap or trick. When no threat made itself know, she cautiously leaned forward to grab the PipBoy and began flipping through its menus. “How the fuck…”

“You missed it.” He was still staring at her, flat and unaffected. “When you ransacked his casino.”

This got her attention again; she tore her eyes away from the PipBoy with some alarm, leaning away from him in her chair.

“How did you get in there?”

Vulpes blinked, and looked down at his hands, curled around the table’s edge. Something approaching the ghost of a wry smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

“He gave me security clearance. The same as you.” He looked at her, his half smile, half grimace still in place. “The same as all his favorite playthings, I’m sure.” The smile faded, and he broke eye contact again to stare at the wall. “You can use that to follow in the Courier’s footsteps. You should be able to find the Sierra Madre, and your… woman.”

“He might have lied about the Sierra Madre, and about Christine,” Veronica said. It wasn’t clear to Vulpes if she was voicing doubts she really held, or just being argumentative through force of habit.

“The Courier doesn’t lie. Not about the big things.”

“He doesn’t, does he.” She frowned at the PipBoy again, and set it down beside the gold ingot. “Why… why are you-”

“I’m running out of chems,” Vulpes said plainly, cutting her off. He folded his hands. “I have a seventeen day supply left, and I don’t- there’s not really a reason for me to be here anymore _._ There’s no point in waiting it out.” What did it matter, after all, if he killed himself today instead of tomorrow? He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts.

The third item: the map. He slid it forward under two fingers.

“This map shows everything I know about the Mojave.” He met Veronica’s eye again. “It shows where you can find the Courier, northwest of Goodsprings, in Death Valley.”

“Why are you giving this to me?”

“I’m a cripple,” he said, letting the sting of the word wash over him without sinking in. “There was never anything I could do to stop the Courier. You can, though. You have the ability, and the drive. You could do it.”

The scribe picked up the map, but didn’t unfold it. She was watching the fox across from her.

“When are you, uh, leaving?”

Vulpes blinked at her. She was being much more calm about this than he really expected. Enemy or not, she didn’t seem like the type to be so cavalier about death.

“Today.”

“I know I totally held you captive for a little bit there, but it’s not because of me, is it?”

For the second time, he was astonished by her hubris.

“No.”

“Oh. Just got tired of hiding from the Courier, then, I guess.”

“Nobody can hide forever,” he said quietly.

“Uh. Okay.” She laid the map on the table and tapped her fingers over it in a nervous tic. “Nice knowing you, then. No promises on the whole Courier thing.”

She smiled at him in a forced way that suggested she wanted him to leave, _now_ , so she had room to process everything he’d literally dumped on her, and he obliged. He gathered up his crutches, looked over his “gifts” one last time, and moved out in the hall.

He limped down the hall and out the bunker door into the blazing sunlight for the last time.

He’d given it some thought. As far as locations went, it had felt most fitting to go end things in the north bunker, laying himself to rest with all the other dead. He wasn’t a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, and had no particular desire to be mistaken for one of their number by future explorers, but there was something satisfying about vanishing into a crowd.

He wondered what the scribe would do when she found him, if she found him. Perhaps she’d leave him to rest, but perhaps she would eject him from her family tomb. He hoped the crows and scorpions would pick his corpse clean and make off with the bones before the night stalkers found it.

He reached the bunker without incident, and let himself inside again. He paused in the abject darkness just inside the closed door to pull the flashlight from his pocket and switch it on. The narrow beam lit the way between walls lined with dead; bare gnarled feet and worn boots marking either side of his walkway. He paused about two thirds of the way down the line, and awkwardly settled himself into a wide gap between bodies. On his left were the shriveled remains of a blonde woman in recon armor. To his right, a gape-mouthed man in robes with his arms twisted across his chest.

His attention wandered briefly to the bunker itself. The walls and floors were in good shape, but they were dusty and bland. The hallway itself was squat, with rounded edges for maximum durability. All in all, it was a very functional space, but dark, and ugly, and made uglier by its new role as a crypt.

For a moment, Vulpes wished he were somewhere more beautiful. He’d seen such incredible sprawling red cliffs, and verdant canyons, heard the burbling rush of cool water over worn river rocks. It seemed a shame he couldn’t die on the salt pans, where the ground was a mirror of the sky, and the heavens touched the earth- endless clouds and blue sky, and him just floating in it.

He tucked the flashlight between jaw and shoulder, took the Med-X from his pocket, stabbed the first needle into it, and slowly injected it into his arm.

Thirty years late, but he was finally eating the salt.

The first hit was generous, and more than he was used to, if not the most he’d ever taken at once. Still, it slammed into him like a freight train. He struggled to focus as he filled another needle with Med-X, mind already shrouding itself in the steam. He jabbed it into his arm, missing the vein entirely. He bled freely when he pulled the needle free for another try; he was still hot from his walk in the sun, and his blood was a little thinner than it might have been otherwise. His hair and clothes clung unpleasantly with his rapidly cooling sweat. The world receded as he fumbled the needle, and it clattered to the ground, rolling down the almost imperceivable incline towards the center of the corridor. He tried to grab at it, but his hands stopped listening to him. The flashlight slipped from his hold and rolled away, casting a kaleidoscope of shadows over the walls before coming to a rest several feet away, painting a dingy circle oval of light across the opposite wall, fringed on bottom with the jagged outlines of mummified feet. No, no, no, it was all going _wrong_.

A failure, even in death. Of course he was. He’d failed at everything else; why should this be different? He couldn’t save his family, he couldn’t save Caesar, he couldn’t save the Legion, and he couldn’t save himself. Now he couldn’t even die properly- all he’d wanted was dignity in death, but this was _sloppy_.

The Courier, he knew, would grin if he could see it. He despaired at the thought.

He had imagined death to be a final, permanent escape; now he wondered if suicide wouldn’t just be a drab and ill-placed hyphen in the darkest part of his story, with no more text following; a concession that the Courier had won, and always would, forever. Nausea born of chems and nerves twisted through his body, making him wrap his arms around himself as if he could physically hold his squirming guts in place.

He had never quite believed in any afterlife. Even at the height of the Legion, the gods and myths had been little more than social framework and allegory to him- stories to mold his morals around. But to volunteer himself to a legacy of ultimate cowardice, the supreme victim… Oh. No. He held no illusions that he was a good person, but _he deserved better_.

And why did the bunker have to be so _gray_? It was never supposed to be like _this._ He should have jumped off the dam after Caesar, tumbling and shattering like the scorched bone had. Instead, he slid down the concrete wall, slumping sideways over the blonde woman’s corpse, weak and exhausted and finally, _finally_ scared.

_He didn_ _’t want to die. He didn’t want to live like this anymore, but faex, he DIDN’T WANT TO DIE, what was he doing?!_

Panic bubbled under the chems, and he choked on each shallow gulp of air. He could smell the body beneath him, strangely musty and sweet; it creaked and crunched as he struggled to right himself. He could feel his heartbeat slowing, and his breathing evened out before it grew shallow, and he knew it wasn’t because his terror had subsided. A new dread pooled deep in his belly, radiating up his spine.

Even in the hellscape of the salt pans, he hadn’t wanted to die, even with no salvation on the horizon and children dying all around him. _Even then_. He’d survived out of sheer force of will, locked side by side with Gaius, supporting each other until they found fresh spring water.

His leg wasn’t what crippled him, it was _pride._ Always pride. The Courier had been shot in the head and _he_ still managed to get back up again. Dying now? Like this? It would be an _unconscionable_ forfeit.

What an idiot he was. That book with its florid language and ridiculous sentimentality had been right all along. He couldn’t do this alone. He never should have tried.

 _Too late now_ , he thought as his last shred of focus dissolved and his mind dispersed into the darkness. His body wound down after it, sinking and settling. His heart barely fluttered. His breath barely moved air.

He stilled.

* * *

The flashlight sat in the middle of the bunker floor. Its beam was yellow, until the ancient batteries began to fail, and then it was brown, and then there was no light at all.

The walls were lined with motionless bodies, resting in peace, in silence, in the dark.

The silence was loud; it rang like the echo of church bells, or the song of a standing bowl.

In the silence, there was movement: a prayer wheel, mid-turn.

On the floor, two thirds of the way back, a body sucked in a breath of air.

* * *

_Never too late._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last, a HUNDRED THOUSAND WORDS later, the sun rises on Vulpes' future! It took some doing, but the idiot has realized that death ain't that great! Or, at least, revenge against the Courier is better... maybe. Who can say?
> 
> Because I've pretty much said it in this chapter, I'm going to be 100% clear about it here: this Vulpes Inculta is some flavor of aroace, not that he has the vocabulary, understanding, or desire to verbalize that. The boy's just not interested.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading! I love you all so much; your support means the world to me. Thank you all for your comments and kudos. They fill me with delight every time I see them.
> 
> We have maybe one more chapter before a brief hiatus. Thank you for bearing with me!


End file.
